Cork Settlement Committee



The Cork Settlement Project is being conducted by the Maine Ulster Scots Project which was created in 2005 by the Saint Andrews Society of Maine. The project will study and attempt to locate the circa 1720 Cork Settlement on the Kennebec River within the larger context of the Scotch-Irish emigration from Ireland to Maine prior to the American Revolutionary War, and to report those findings to Maine students and to the general public.

The goal of the Cork Settlement project is to research, locate and document the Cork settlement on the Kennebec River in Maine and further our knowledge of that settlement within the larger so called "Scotch-Irish" emigration to the District of Maine prior to the American Revolution. Although the general history of the Cork settlement is known, neither a focused documentary search nor coordinated professional archeological investigation of the area has been done. The Cork Project will address this by methodically gathering written and physical evidence.

A Phase 1 survey of the area has been done by historical archeologist Barry Rodrigue of the University of Southern Maine and research assistant and student project director Rebecca Graham. Results of this survey have been disseminated to the Maine Historic Preservation Commission in accordance to Maine State guidelines for archaeological research. A Phase II archeological survey will now be conducted by historical archeologists Pamela Crane and Peter Morrison of Crane and Morrison Archeology, Freeport, Maine. A documentary research team will create a repository of printed information related to the Scotch-Irish presence in the District of Maine up to the time of the American Revolutionary War with an immediate focus on the Cork settlement and the Kennebec River tidewater area. The documentary research team will include Jay Robbins, place based historian; Rebecca Graham, student project director; Barry Rodrigue, Associate Professor USM Lewiston; William McKeen, McKeen family genealogist and past president of the Saint Andrews Society of Maine; John Mann, Professional Land Surveyor; and Alister McReynolds, Honorary Fellow, University of Ulster, Institute of Ulster Scots studies.

The Maine Ulster Scots Project (MUSP) was created in 2005 by the Saint Andrews Society of Maine (SASME) with the intent of saving and sharing the stories of Maine's early Scots-Irish families. The SASME is part of a world-wide not-for-profit organization with an objective of promoting and preserving the heritage of the many Maine Scots and their descendants. The MUSP program is further affiliated with the University of Ulster (UU) and Southern Georgia University (SGU) through a program entitled "Frontiers and Fringes - The Ulster-Scots experience in America." It is hoped that other organizations interested in preserving the cultural history and environmental quality of the Kennebec tidewater area will also endorse this project.

John Mann, Barry Rodrigue and Rebecca Graham have presented their findings thus far publicly at the Frontiers and Fringes conference in Savannah Georgia in September 2009 and the Maine Scots-Irish Experience Conference in April 2010.