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Phippsburg is a town in Sagadahoc County, Maine, United States, on the west side of the mouth of the Kennebec River. The population was 2,216 at the 2010 census. It is within the Portland–South Portland–Biddeford, Maine, metropolitan statistical area. A tourist destination, Phippsburg is home to Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area, Fort Popham State Historic Site; it is also home to Fort Baldwin which overlooks Fort Popham, and Popham Beach State Park, as well as Pond Island National Wildlife Refuge. The town includes part of Winnegance. ==History== Site of the Popham Colony, Phippsburg was — between 1607 and 1608 — the first known English settlement attempt in New England. During its brief existence, colonists built ''Virginia of Sagadahoc'', the first ship in Maine's long history of shipbuilding.〔''Phippsburg-Fair To The Wind'', Compiled by the Phippsburg Historical Society, 1964〕 The next British settlement at the mouth of the Kennebec River began in 1653; Thomas Atkins, a fisherman, purchased from the sachem Mowhotiwormet, commonly called Chief Robinhood, the southern end of Phippsburg (with the exception of Popham). Atkins Bay bears his name. The population gradually increased until King Philip's War, when Indians in August 1676 attacked the eastern side of the Kennebec River, massacring and scalping the colonists, or else carrying them into captivity. Dwellings were burned and stocks of cattle killed. The entire area was abandoned. Resettlement commenced in 1679 at Newtown, located on the southern end of Arrowsic Island (across the river from present-day Phippsburg Center). About 1684, Francis Small had a trading post at Cape Small, which bears his name. But in 1689 the area was again destroyed and deserted during King William's War. With the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1713, conflict was formally ended between the Abenaki Indians and English settlements. In 1714, Newtown was reestablished, then incorporated in 1716 as Georgetown-on-Arrowsic by the Massachusetts General Court. Also in 1716, the Pejepscot Proprietors established a little fishing village called Augusta at the Small Point Harbor area of Phippsburg. Dr. Oliver Noyes, director of the colony, erected a stone fort 100 feet (30 meters) square to protect it. In 1717, Governor Samuel Shute held a conference at Georgetown-on-Arrowsic with tribal delegates, who arrived in a flotilla of canoes and encamped on Lee Island.〔( Brief Description and History of Phippsburg, Maine )〕 But in summer of 1723 during Dummer's War, the Norridgewocks and 250 of their Indian allies from Canada, incited by the French missionary Sebastien Rale, attacked the area. Again it was deserted, with the stone fort destroyed. Governor William Dummer's Treaty of 1725 restored peace, and in 1737 an attempt was made to resettle Cape Small Point. The boundaries of Georgetown-on-Arrowsic were enlarged to encompass most of present-day Phippsburg, Bath (which then included West Bath), Woolwich and Georgetown.〔(Phippsburg History Timeline )〕 Slow resettlement of the Phippsburg peninsula found ten farms along the Kennebec River by 1751, with five more on the Casco Bay side. But the districts gathered into Georgetown-on-Arrowsic began splitting away; in 1759, Woolwich withdrew, followed in 1781 by Bath. In 1814, Phippsburg was set off and incorporated. The original petition requested that it be named Dromore after one of the town's oldest sections, but Massachusetts chose instead to honor one of its royal governors, Sir William Phips — actually a native of Woolwich.〔 〕 Between 1842 and 1890, wooden ships were built at Phippsburg. It also had numerous tidal mills. During the Gilded Age, Popham Beach developed into a resort area, with steamboats transporting excursionists from Bath. Today, the town's principal industries are fishing and tourism. Phippsburg was the site of the discovery, in 1971, of the Spirit Pond runestones, purported evidence of pre-Columbian European exploration of North America, considered widely a hoax by academics. The three stones were found by Walter J. Elliot, Jr., a carpenter from Bath, Maine. The runestones are now in the possession of the Maine State Museum in Augusta, Maine. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Phippsburg, Maine」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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