Penal The State prison is at Thomaston, the State Industrial School for Girls at Hallowell and the State Reform School about two miles from Portland. Prisoners in the county jails and convicts in the State prison are obliged to work and the products of their labor are sold in the markets. Contracts are sometimes made for the labor of prisoners in the jails of some of the counties. The work of the inmates of the reform school is usually on the farm and in workshops. The girls at the industrial school are taught domestic work and some trades.
Maine is supposed to have been visited by the earliest explorers: Corte-Real in 1501 and Verrazano in 1524 reported a coast, the description of which corresponds with that of Maine. Gomez in 1525 sailed along the coast and named the Penobscot River, Rio de las Gamas, or Stag River. Sir John Hawkins, the famous Elizabethan seaman, explored the coast in 1565, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert in the voyage which cost his life was on his way to the Penobscot region, then known as Norum bega, to settle a colony under a patent from Elizabeth. Bartholomew Gosnold, an English man (one of the founders of Jamestown, Va.), explored the coast in 1602, and Maine was vis ited by Martin Pring, in 1603, by De Monts in 1604 and by Weymouth in 1605. The first at tempt to settle on the territory was made by the French under De Monts, who, having re ceived a patent from the French king planted a small colony on Neutral Island in tie Saint Croix River in 1604. The first colony settle ment attempted by the English was at the mouth of the Sagadahoc by George Popham and Raleigh Gilbert in 1607. A fort was erected and a number of buildings and here the Vir ginia, the first vessel built in the country, was launched and subsequently formed one of the fleet of the Somers and Gates Colony in 1609. The colony at Sagadahoc was broken up by the death of Popham and great hardships endured by the colonists. They returned to England in the autumn of 1608. In 1613 French Jesuits established a mission on Mount Desert Island, but they were expelled by the English the next year. In 1614 the coast was visited by John Smith, who found a few scattered settlers around Pemaquid Bay and on the island of Monhegan, off the coast of that part of the State now included in Lincoln County. In 1616 Sir Ferdinando Gorges, "The father of Amer ican Colonizaticrn,D who had sent Pring and Popham to Maine, sent his agent, Richard Vines, to Saco to remain during the winter to explore the country and test the climate. In
1620 the king of Great Britain made a division of the grand charter of 1606 and granted to the Plymouth Company in England the whole coun try lying between 40° and 48° N., and to the Virginia Company the southern portion of the original patent. On 10 Aug. 1622, Gorges re ceived a patent of territory between the Merri mac and Kennebec rivers, and the next year sent his son Robert as governor and lieutenant general of the country, accompanied by several councillors and a minister of the Church of England to establish worship. In 1629 an other division of lands was made giving to Sir Ferdinando Gorges the country between the Piscataqua and Kennebec rivers, to which he gave the name of New Somersetshire, and the remainder to John Mason. The first court in the province was convened by William Gorges, nephew of Sir Ferdinando, at Saco, 21 March 1636. Charles I granted to Gorges in 1639 a charter under which in 1641 Gorges established the first chartered city in the United States, un der the name of Gorgeana, and constituted it the capital of the province. What was then Gorgeana is now York. Its original name was Agamenticus. A fort was built here and ef forts made to protect the people against the Indians. From 1630 to 1632 settlements were commenced in Saco, Biddeford, Scarboro, Cape Elizabeth and Portland, all of which continued to prosper till the Indian War of 1675, when they were overthrown. Massachusetts claimed a portion at least of the territory of Maine on the ground that its charter included the lands as far north as three miles above the source of the Merrimac; but those to whom other char ters had been given resented her interference. In 1677 Massachusetts purchased from the heirs of Gorges all their interest in the province of Maine. A new charter, issued by William and Mary, in 1691, combined the provinces of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Acadia, Maine and Sagadahoc into one province, called °The Royal Province of Massachusetts Bay.° Maine was now a part of Massachusetts. Remote from the centre of white settlements of any great size, Maine suffered from attacks by Indians, espe cially during the French and Indian wars. When King Philip's War was ended there were within its boundaries only five settlements.