Nathan Dow

• General Notes
  • Nathan got at outs with the Friends, when he married his second wife. For twenty years they lived somewhere around Salisbury or Haverhill, Massachusetts. About 1760 he took his entire family to Maine and presumably the home folks never heard from them again. Presumably he went by water, for there was no overland route, but perhaps not with the original settlers of Deer Island, Maine, led from Haverhill in 1762 by Major William Eaton. Natha was not in the original division of Deer Island, but came there from the mainland in 1767. Here he died almost at once, his will dated Deer Island, May 13, 1767, probated in Brunswick, Maine the same year. In 1764 Nathan was living not far from Bath, Maine.
    A generation or so before Robert P. Dow published his book, William Dow, sailor of Tremont, Maine, too advanced in years for anything save short fishing trips, used to take his grandchildren on his knee and tell them tales of his own grandsire, of old times, of wars, Indian fights, privation, massachres, scalping, bravery. He enjoined upon the open mouthed youngsters that they should remember these tales, these names, and repeat all to their own grandchildren, to pass down to many generatioins yet unborn. Youth is careless. These grandchildren, past middle age by the time they spoke with Robert P. Dow, wished to recall the tales, buty only scraps came to mind. It was only by coincidence of names that the connection of Deer Island appeared and only by comparison of records that the first Dow of Deer Island was found to be the Quaker born from ol Salisbury.
    In 1762 the place was settled by a party from Haverhill, Massachusetts. That town had grown until the individual farm was too small to support a family. One must emigrate or stave. The end of the French War made Maine a safe place and most of it was uninhabited. It is not hard to understand why Deer Island was chosen. No one trided to forsee a city to come a century later, to see real estate increasing greatly in value. All they asked was a safe place with plenty of food. Here the abundance of deer named the island. The rock bound coast forbade any landing of an enemy. Timber was abundant, the soil, when cleared, not unfertile, fish in the great plenty. Nothing seemed lacking; the land was theirs from the bare fact of occupancy. So, here settled about 30 families, mostly from Haverhill or around Gloucester, Massachusetts; a few from the Salisbury region.