Sagamore Thomas Chabinock, of Nampscoscoke bequeathed unto John Wadleigh of Wells, all the land from the Ogunquit River to Kennebunk River, up to the Mousam River Falls, in 1649, with the consent of Tom’s mother, Ramanascho. In 1654, John Wadleigh’s son Robert conveyed the portion on the northeast bank of the Mousam River, then called Cape Porpus River, to Francis Littlefield Sr.. That deed specifies, “beginning at a little hill which butts upon the river where there is an Indian Grave.”

Fast forward 229 years, to the spring of 1883. Nobody was thinking about the Wadleigh deeds when workers were digging the railroad bed for the Kennebunk Beach branch of the Boston & Maine Railroad. They had to dig through the middle of a small hill on the northeast bank of the Mousam River to lay tracks to the Beach. An article appeared in the Eastern Star on April 6, 1883,

“While making excavations on the line of the Kennebunkport Branch railroad about a mile from the Boston & Maine Depot last week a human skeleton was found.” “Some are certain from the formation of his skull and other physiological characteristics that he belongs to a race of beings that are now extinct, while others imagine him to have been an Indian chieftain who fell in battle while defending his native soil from an early settler.”

Kennebunk Historian, William E. Barry was in the process of moving his family back from Massachusetts to Kennebunk and into Wallingford Hall that Spring. He later described the accidental excavation of the grave in his book Stroll Along a Familiar River. “Below the surface of the ground on a high bank & in view of the river, was discovered a while since, during some excavating, a place of probable Indian burial, as the skeleton was in a sitting posture.” Among the relics recovered in the excavation debris were two stone implements, an axe and a 14-inch club or pestle. Other Indigenous artifacts were found in the general vicinity.

Evidence of the Indigenous People of the Kennebunks abounds. See you next Thursday night at the Town House School for the last lecture of the season.