PATRIOTS’ DAY PROGRAM
WHO: North Yarmouth Historical Society, Maine Ulster-Scots Project (MUSP), Pejepscot History Center, Yarmouth Historical Society, Harpswell Historical Society
WHAT: A special program highlighting newly-available artifacts from Revolutionary-era Maine
WHERE: Wescustogo Hall and Community Center, 120 Memorial Highway, North Yarmouth, and Old Town House, 475 Walnut Hill Road, North Yarmouth
WHEN: Saturday, April 26 2025
• 11:30 AM, Presentation by historian John Mann at Wescustogo Hall
• 1 PM, Reception and Social Hour at Old Town House
For more info: Pre-registration is recommended. To pre-register, contact Julie Potter-Dunlop at julie@maineulsterscots.com
Everyone has heard stories of British settlers coming to the indigenous lands of 1600s and early 1700s New England. But it is an often-overlooked fact that other Europeans, distinct from the English, emigrated here.
Among these were Scots-Irish people: the Ulster-Scots.
More than 350 of these emigrants came to New England, including Maine, hoping to make a new life—settlers with names such as Anderson, Mathews, Smith, Stanwood, Armstrong, and Patten. In fact, today Maine has the highest percentage of self-identified Scots-Irish and Scottish descendants in the entire USA.
During the 1700s these now-American emigrants joined others in steadily and angrily rising up against the British government. And in the days before cellphones and the internet, heated letters flew back and forth between Mainers and Boston’s “Committees of Correspondence,” a crucial networking group that worked to organize dissenters. When open war ultimately broke out, hundreds of patriots joined the fight.
Many Mainers traveled to the Boston area and other points south to fight. Among them were Ulster-Scots.
A unit of recruits enlisted and mustered out of North Yarmouth right after the battle of Lexington and Concord in 1775.
Many letters, proclamations, and lists of patriot fighters are found in well-known historical collections. But a volunteer group, the Maine Ulster-Scots Project (MUSP), has suspected that there are more artifacts to be unearthed and to shine light on the role of Ulster-Scots in the Revolution.
Recently a lucky convergence of events and a lot of hard work on the part of MUSP members has found this to be true.
Last November a MUSP researcher, Dr. Orrin C. Shane III, consulted with Maine Historical Society about more “primary source documents” that would help show how Revolutionary rebellion ignited in the District of Maine (as known at the time). He was amazed to discover a 1773 document that had popped up online bearing the name of the “North Yarmouth Committee of Correspondence.” It had only recently been digitized. With astonishment, he saw that it was one of several owned by the New York Public Library.
It was a surprise to find them far from home. Did others exist in Ancient North Yarmouth itself?
The question led to an obvious query by MUSP volunteer Dr. Julie A. Potter-Dunlop to North Yarmouth Historical Society (NYHS). It came at just the right moment; NYHS had only recently moved its collections into a new Archives space in its historic Old Town House, and it was now possible to open up boxes that had long been unexamined and stored away.
On a chilly morning in January, 2025, Julie visited NYHS’s Archives. She sat down with files of 1770s-era documents and slowly started to turn pages.
With excitement, she found herself staring at a dozen priceless letters penned by indignant North Yarmouth residents, proclaiming their decision to join their Boston counterparts in fomenting revolution. She brought Dr. Shane to North Yarmouth a week later, and both took a closer look. They selected several letters from the treasure trove to be digitized by the Osher Map Library.
These documents showed Mainers, Ulster-Scots emigrants among them, denouncing the “despotic Monarchy (that) seems now with hasty strides to threaten all the Colonies with Ruin and Destruction,” and pleading with their fellow Mainers to stand up for their rights.
“Let them… turn the tables, and view themselves as men, as americans, as colonists… under the promises & in the enjoyment of the privileges of british subjects … as much as the those in the realm of England.”
These newly-discovered letters were too good to simply refile in archival boxes. So MUSP and NYHS created a public program set for April 26, 2025 to spotlight these and other historic artifacts.
“A Scotch-Irish Rebellion” kicks off a year-long commemoration of the 250th anniversary of American independence, in 2026.
Ulster-Scots emigrants to the Maine frontier and to the Ancient North Yarmouth area in particular will be highlighted.
The lecture portion of the event will feature surveyor, author, and Maine Ulster-Scots Project director John Mann, who will give a talk on his ancestor Thomas Means and other Means’ family and neighbors who enlisted immediately after the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
The reception and social hour will feature exhibits of town letters, petitions, and Resolves, and other artifacts from the period from several historical organizations.
Visitors can also check MUSP’s roster of Ulster-Scots patriots for their own family ancestral names who likely served in the conflict.
These Scots-Irish Americans may not have arrived on the Mayflower. But they were one of a diverse groups of Mainers who formed the bedrock of the American Revolution.
Participating organizations include North Yarmouth Historical Society, Maine Ulster-Scots Project, Pejepscot History Center, Yarmouth Historical Society, and Harpswell Historical Society.
Pre-registration is recommended. To pre-register, contact Julie Potter-Dunlop at julie@maineulsterscots.com
~source: Katie Murphy, President, North Yarmouth Historical Society
