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The town of Hampden celebrates its 230th birthday this weekend, commemorating its official incorporation on Feb. 24, 1794, as a town.
Prior to that, it was known as the plantation of Wheelersborough, established in 1774 and named for the area’s first white settler, Benjamin Wheeler. Town founders thought that name was too long, however, and after one month in 1794 in which the town was planned to be renamed Olive — why Olive, we’re not sure — the name Hampden was chosen.
The incident that would put Hampden on the historical map would come 20 years after its founding, with the Battle of Hampden in 1814, a conflict during the War of 1812 that would be the last ever fought on New England soil.
It’s not the last battle to be fought in New England territory — that distinction goes to the Battle of Portland Harbor, a Civil War naval skirmish in Portland Harbor in June 1863 between Union and Confederate forces — but it was the last time blood was shed in a military conflict in New England.
The Battle of Hampden began on Sept. 3, 1814, when British forces led by Captain Robert Barrie sailed up the Penobscot River and attacked the U.S.S. Adams, which was anchored and undergoing repairs outside of Hampden. British forces had already occupied Castine on Sept. 1, and had re-established all of Maine east of the Penobscot River as New Ireland, a part of Canada.
Though the 500 Bangor-area militiamen knew the British were coming and were prepared for battle, they were still greatly outmaneuvered by the better-trained British when they arrived on land. Many militiamen fled, and the remaining soldiers opted to blow up the U.S.S. Adams, rather than see it fall into the hands of the British.
The British quickly occupied Hampden and were set to do the same to Bangor the following day. Bangor selectmen averted the occupation by making a deal to give the British some ships in return for them leaving town.
Hampden would remain occupied for four days, with British soldiers reportedly vandalizing homes and killing livestock. Many Hampden townsfolk were held captive on a British ship or in a local warehouse. The only thing that kept the British from burning the town down was a bond Hampden issued against the completion later in the year of several unfinished ships.
On Sept. 7, Barrie and his men moved on, heading down the Penobscot to the town of Frankfort, where they demanded arms, ammunition and livestock from the townsfolk. According to James Ellis’ book “A Ruinous and Unhappy War: New England and the War of 1812,” Frankfort residents did not comply, and Barrie returned to Castine —but not without threatening to come back to Frankfort later and “make them pay.”
The conflict resulted in one soldier killed for both the British and Americans and one British sailor, along with two American civilians killed in Hampden. New Ireland — a swath of land that stretched from Brewer to Eastport and north to what would become Aroostook County — was held by the British for a total of eight months. In December 1814, the Treaty of Ghent ended the war and returned that part of Maine to the U.S.
Memories of the occupation of Hampden contributed to anti-British sentiments that led to the Aroostook War in 1838, which resolved lingering northern border questions between the U.S. and the United Kingdom. There technically was a battle on U.S. soil during the Aroostook War, but that one-day fight, dubbed the Battle of Caribou, was between informal bands of American and Canadian lumberjacks, and resulted in no casualties.
The conflict in Hampden and the Aroostook War also spurred the building of Fort Knox at the mouth of the Penobscot a few miles down the river in the town of Prospect, to protect against further enemy intrusions up the river. The fort, which took 25 years to build between 1844 and 1869, never saw combat and was decommissioned in 1923.
The Battle of Hampden also laid bare how little the powers in Massachusetts at the time cared about the northern half of the state — remember, Maine was still a part of Massachusetts in 1814. That lack of involvement was one of the main arguments in the push for Maine’s statehood, which finally came to be in 1820.
Since then, life has been a lot quieter in Hampden. But the town’s colorful beginnings are certainly something worth remembering on its birthday.
