The Popham Colony: A Discussion of Its Historical Claims, with a Bibliography of the Subject

In 1607, a group of English settlers established a brief colony at the mouth of Maine's Kennebec River. Within a year, it had collapsed, its patron Sir John Popham (known to contemporaries as "the hangman") having died, and the settlers mostly returning to England. Yet three centuries later, the colony's legacy remained contentious enough to spark a vigorous historiographical battle. William Frederick Poole, the legendary librarian and historian who would found Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, enters this fray with a sharp polemical essay that dissects the claims and counterclaims surrounding the settlement. Poole's target is a recent address given at the Popham Celebration, along with the various historians who had weighed in on whether the colonists were largelyconvicted felons from London's Old Bailey, whether they actually constructed a seaworthy vessel called a "pynnace" during their harsh Maine winter, and whether the colony deserved its place in the canonical narrative of American founding. Through a close reading of contemporary sources including Strachey's accounts and periodical exchanges, Poole dismantles romanticized claims while defending rigorous historical methodology. The result is a fascinating window into how 19th-century American historians negotiated the republic's origins, grappling with the uncomfortable truth that some earliest English ventures were barely remembered failures rather than noble precursors to Plymouth and Jamestown.