On and on
The Pineland cemetary
The history of Malaga Island is rich and interesting. An island of
descendants of a freed black slave, Benjamin Darling, the former residents
(squatters) were driven from their homes by force in the early 1900s in hopes
of increasing tourism in the region.
Malago (as the locals call the island) was once inhabited by the descendants
of Benjamin Darling. Legend has it that Benjamin Darling was a slave who was
given his freedom as a reward for saving his master, Captain Darling in a
shipwreck. Though he is believed to have been a slave from the West Indies, DNA
of his ancestors has been traced to the Senegal / Gambia region of Africa.
Benjamin purchased Harbor Island (just southeast of Malaga in 1794 for 15 pounds.
Benjamin Darling never lived on Malaga Island but his descendants were the
first to settle there and on many of the surrounding islands of northeastern
Casco Bay. He was married to a white woman, Sara Proverbs, and their children
were of mixed race.
The earliest known owner of Malaga Island may have been Eli Perry who
supposedly bought the island for $150 in 1818. He never paid taxes on it, and
his descendants were later unable to provide a deed for the island. Perry never
lived on the island.
The Darlings and Griffins were some of the first to settle on Malaga. By
1880 there were 27 people living on the island in a settlement on the north
end. By 1900 there were 40.
By the winter of 1892, the State of Maine began helping the poor of Malaga
from the Maine Pauper Relief Fund. Those living on the island were often talked
of and portrayed as immoral, and living in unfit conditions. They were of mixed
race and quite poor, though, not much more so than many on the mainland.
What was considered the pauper community on Malaga Island was thought to be
a deterrent to potential tourism in the region as evidenced by newspaper
articles of the time. Those on the mainland related to those on the island
dared not speak out for fear they would also be judged immoral or unfit by
others within the close-knit fishing communities in Phippsburg.
For five years the towns of Harpswell and Phippsburg fought over who owned
the island. Neither one wanted the responsibility of it or the poor living
there.
In 1903 the state granted the island to Phippsburg but this was repealed in
1905. The islanders became wards of the state and their fate fell to the
jurisdiction of the Governor's Executive Council.
In 1906 the Charles Lane family came to Harbor Island and began to help the
poor of Malaga Island. Lucy, Charles Lane's daughter, took an active interest
in the children on the island and arranged for the teaching of the island
children beginning in 1906 in James McKenney's home on Malaga. By 1909 the
first schoolhouse was built on the island and within two years there were
drastic improvements in literacy of those who attended.
In the summer of 1911, then Governor Frederick Plaisted and a group of
officials visited the homes and families living on Malaga. These officials
decided that eight of the islanders were feeble minded. They were placed in the
Pineland Center for the Feeble Minded in Pownal, Maine. It is unlikely they
were feeble minded, but may have been sick as one of them died of Bright's
Disease (kidney failure) within a year of leaving the island. It has also been
written, though unconfirmed, that James McKenney may have told the state
workers to take the Marks family as they had something that was wasn't catching
but that no one wanted to be around. Seven of those deemed feeble minded were
from the Marks family.
Three weeks later the descendents of Eli Perry notified those remaining on
Malaga that they had just under one year to completely remove themselves from
Malaga. The state then bought the island for $471 and paid a small stipend to
some of the islanders to assist in their relocation. Remaining structures on
the island not removed by July 1912 were burned and the schoolhouse was
removed. The remains of those buried on the island were dug up and reburied at
Pineland.
In 1913 the island was bought from the state by a man named Everard Wilson.
Mr. Wilson was a friend of a Dr. Gustavs Kilgore who was the chairman of
Governor Plaisted's three member panel on the executive council committee.
These were the same men who investigated the island just after Governor
Plaisted took office in 1911.
In 2001 the Maine State Heritage Trust bought the island from a private
owner for a nominal fee. Their intent with the island is to protect it from
development, to foster low impact recreation,and to sustain the long standing
tradition of local fishermen storing their traps on the island in the
wintertime.
The trust has led archaeological digs where a wealth of information was
found about the island community, has cut and maintained a loop trail on the
island, has been a valuable asset in the outreach to those descendants of the
original settlers who still live in the area, and has become a proud and
deserving steward of the island for generations to come.
