In honor of black history month
A fishing community wrested from an island in Maine over a century ago
In 1912, nearly fifty years after slavery was abolished in the United States, an interracial community living on Malaga Island off the mid-coast of Maine was exiled by the governor at the time, Frederick Plaisted. Even though the Civil War had ended in 1865, followed by ratification of the 13th Amendment, racial discrimination was still very much alive.
During this time in Maine’s history, newspaper reports described the island settlement as “not fit for dogs” or “disgusting and pitiable” and “a shameful disgrace”.[i] A combination of yellow journalism, political corruption, and the popular eugenics theory led to the eviction of the community that had been on the island for several generations and nearly seventy-five years.
Myths circulated about Malaga being a stopping point for the Underground Railroad, or a place for sea captains coming from the West Indies to drop off their concubines and illegitimate children before going home to their wives. None of it was true. The families were mixed race – combinations of black, white, and Native American – managing to scratch out an existence on the unforgiving rocky coast.
Settlement of Malaga Island
Benjamin Darling, an enslaved man owned by a ship’s captain, was an early settler on the mid-coast. According to legend, “Black Ben” was granted his freedom and some money to purchase nearby Horse Island in 1794 after saving his owner in a shipwreck. As a free man, he married a white woman, Sarah Proverbs, and they had several children.[ii]
Eventually, the descendants of Ben and Sarah established homesteads on Malaga and families grew over the years to include the Darlings and Griffins, the Murphys and Easons, the Dunnings and Johnsons, the Tripps and Parkers, the Marks and McKenneys.
Jim McKenney was known as the King of Malaga for his reputation as the best fisherman, and William Johnson was a civil war veteran, along with Henry Tripp who served in the 7th and 9th Maine regiments until wounded in Gettysburg.[iii]
During this time in Maine’s history, the shipping, wooden shipbuilding, and fishing industries collapsed, causing people to leave Maine in masses. The burden of providing for the poor became a stressor on nearly every town budget. The mainland towns near Malaga – Harpswell and Phippsburg – argued over who had responsibility for the island and its community.
Eugenics theory spreads in popularity
To increase tensions even more, the eugenics movement took hold at the turn of the 20th century, praising the benefits of selective breeding and the purity of Anglo-Saxons. Racial superiority, or inferiority, spread in popularity and Malaga became a target.
On December 30, 1905, The Bath Independent and Enterprise wrote, “Poor, shiftless and thriftless, the Malagoites make little provision for the coming winter and consequently their sufferings are very keen.”[iv] In 1911, a Boston newspaper article declared, “Their mode of life is not unlike the Indian. The men are shiftless, lazy and ignorant.”[v]
Conditions in other small Maine communities like Frenchboro (Long Island) and Athens were similar, maybe even worse, but the interracial community of Malaga was different, “inhabited by negroes and whites, which added color to the racy tales of incest and corruption.”[vi]
The missionaries, the governor, and the schoolhouse
Malaga grew notorious in New England, but not everyone saw the community as corrupt. A missionary couple from Massachusetts who summered nearby took an interest in helping them. Captain George and Lucy Lane started a school for the children and eventually formed the Malaga Association to raise funds to build a real schoolhouse on the island.[vii]
In the summer of 1911, Governor Frederick Plaisted and his wife Frances, Secretary of State Cyrus Davis and his wife Flora, and members of the executive council, visited the island and the schoolhouse. Impressed with the children, the governor reported that “the people cannot be forced to leave their poor homes, and we must not encourage others to go there.” [viii]
Questionable ownership of Malaga Island
During this time, three parties laid claim to Malaga Island: the heirs of the Perry family who held a questionable deed, John Griffin who had received a bond for a deed, and a local physician who was issued a quit claim deed in 1888. “A search of Phippsburg town records reveals that no one—not the Perry family, the doctor, or the islanders—had ever paid taxes on the island.”[ix]
The state Attorney General at the time, William R. Pattangall, proclaimed the Perry family the rightful owners.[x] The Malaga Association negotiated a price to purchase the island from the Phippsburg family who had never minded the residents living there. They settled on a price of $400.
Out of the blue, without any notice or warning, the State of Maine stepped in to purchase the island for the exact same dollar amount. The Perrys sold the island, “…that queerly populated, much talked about, possession-disputed isle of Malago,”[xi] to the State of Maine for $400 in February of 1912.
Exile of the settlement 1911-1912
Was this a thinly veiled political act to take ownership out from under the Malaga Association for commercial gain under the guise of ethnic cleansing? Governor Plaisted and his executive council began the removal of the settlement in 1911.
“I think the best plan would be to burn down the shacks with all of their filth,” Plaisted told a newspaper reporter. “Certainly, the conditions there are not credible to our state. We ought not to have such things near our front door, and I do not think that a like condition can be found in Maine, although there are some pretty bad localities elsewhere.”[xii]
A physical, mental, and financial assessment was ordered for each household. According to the Bath Independent newspaper (December 16, 1911), the Marks family and an elderly Annie Parker—four generations from 4 to 70 years old—were committed to the Maine School for the Feeble Minded, forcefully abducted by a state agent and a police captain under the orders of a probate judge.[xiii]
The state sent the remaining 40-45 islanders an eviction notice, ordering them to remove their homes. Any left standing would be burned. Afraid for their safety, the Tripps and Murphys, Easons and Griffins—the entire colony—dismantled their houses for transport, many living as castaways along the coast in makeshift houseboats for weeks and months.
To complete the expulsion, the state removed the bodies buried at the Malaga Island cemetery and reinterred them at the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded.
Generational shame and trauma
One destitute family, the Tripps (a mother and father with three young children) could not find a town who’d accept them and so lived on a scow tied up on the river.[xiv] Others eventually settled in communities nearby, lying about their ancestry. But the racial slurs continued for years. If a fisherman caught a dark lobster, he would say that it must have come from around Malaga.[xv]
In “A Story Best Left Untold,” a radio and photo documentary produced by reporter Rob Rosenthal and photojournalist Kate Philbrick,[xvi] a descendant recalled the abuse she and her family suffered at the hands of her tormented father. He was one of the three children of Robert and Laura Tripp—the family adrift on the scow. Laura died on the deck, her children clinging to her.
State apology of profound regret
Nearly a century later, in 2010, Maine Governor John Baldacci visited the island with a joint resolution of apology by the state legislature.[xvii] With about 90 descendants at hand, he offered the first public admission of “profound regret” for the “tragic displacement of the Malaga islanders in 1912.”[xviii]
The descendants there that day described the apology as spiritual-like, a truth finally whispered in the wind, the sky clearing and the sun shining down on their souls; the first generation to rise above the shame and trauma of the past to declare pride in their heritage.
Shared past: Native American, Acadian, and Malaga Island exiles
The history of expulsion is woven into every corner of America and the lives of some 617 First Nations who lived here before European contact. From the indigenous peoples to the French Acadians to the interracial settlement of Malaga Island, stories of exile are our shared past.
The area known as Acadia to European settlers – from Maritime Canada to Maine – was once the territory of the Wabanaki Confederacy of the Algonquin nations: the Abenaki, Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot.
Between 1740 and 1823, Massachusetts declared war on the Wabanaki Confederacy during the French and Indian conflict and nearly all the Algonquin settlements were forced north of Maine and into Canada.[xix]
In 1755, the British also forced over 7,000 French Acadian men, women, and children aboard converted slave ships, forcing them to leave their homeland to become indentured servants in America and abroad.[xx]
Acadia was once a place where the French coexisted in peace with the Wabanaki.[xxi] These spirits of exile are still with us today, reminding us of our collective pasts to make way for a more peaceful and inclusive future.
This is an excerpt from the forthcoming novel, Goode Vibrations of the Wresting Place by Amy G. Safford
[i] Mitchell, Steve, 1999. The Shame of Maine, Malaga – The Story Behind the Pictures, p. 4, as reported March 1, 1902 Bath Enterprise. Brunswick, Maine, 2005.
[ii] Mosher, John P., 1991. No Greater Abomination: Ethnicity, Class, and Power Relations on Malaga Island, Maine, 1880-1912. Master’s Thesis, University of Southern Maine (New England Studies), p. 29 – 32.
[iii] Barry, William David, 1980. The Shameful Story of Malaga Island. Down East, November 1980
[iv] Mosher, John P. No Greater Abomination, pp. 85.
[v] Goldstein, Seth, 2022. A Window on the Past – Malaga Island. Portland Press Herald, November 23, 2022, Retrieved from A Window on the Past – Malaga Island (pressherald.com).
[vi] Thomas, Miriam Stover, 1973. Flotsam and Jetsam. Pockets of Poverty: Malaga Island, pp. 83
[vii] Mosher, John P., No Greater Abomination, pp. 116-121.
[viii] Dubrule, Deborah, 2005. Malaga, Revisited: On a Casco Bay Island, a shameful incident in Maine’s history comes to light, The Working Waterfront Archives, August 1, 2005, Retrieved from Malaga, revisited: On a Casco Bay island, a shameful incident in Maine’s history comes to light – The Working Waterfront Archives.
[ix] Price, HH and Gerald E. Talbot, 2006. “No Longer a Reproach, The Story of Malaga,” by Allen Breed, in Maine’s Visible Black History, p. 73, Tilbury House Publishers, Gardiner, Maine. August 2006.
[x] Thomas, Miriam Stover, Flotsam and Jetsam, pp. 87.
[xi] Percy, Lauris,1905. Strange Scenes on a Strange Land, Casco Bay Breeze, August 24, 1905. pp. 2.
[xii] Maine State Museum, 2013. Katherine A. McBrien citing Brunswick Times Record, July 21, 1911, in Malaga Island, Fragmented Lives, p. 4. Friends of the Maine State Museum, Custom House Publishing, Rockland, Maine, 2013 (Maine Historical Society pamphlet 5131).
[xiii] Mitchell, Steve. The Shame of Maine, citing December 16, 1911, Bath Independent.
[xiv] “The death of Laura Tripp or the Tragedy of Malaga Island.” Casco Bay Breeze, South Harpswell, ME, March 6, 1913, Maine State Museum Archives, Augusta, Maine.
[xv] Rosenthal, Rob and Philbrick, Kate, 2009. “Malaga Island – A Story Best Left Untold” is a radio and photo documentary produced by Rosenthal and Philbrick in collaboration with WMPG-FM and the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine. It can be accessed at Malaga Island: a story best left untold – Malaga Island: A Story Best Left Untold (mainememory.net)
[xvi] Rosenthal, Rob and Philbrick, Kate, 2009. “Malaga Island – A Story Best Left Untold”
[xvii] Maine State Joint Resolution Recognizing the Tragic Expulsion of the Residents of Malaga Island, 124th Legislature, April 7, 2010. HP132701.pdf (mainelegislature.org)
[xviii] Hoey, Dennis. “Troubling History of Malaga Island takes on added significance a century later,” Portland Press Herald, February 2, 2023. Retrieved from Troubling history of Malaga Island takes on added significance a century later (pressherald.com)
[xix] Stein, Sopie, 2022. “Removal of Wabanaki Settlements in Maine,” March 31, 2022. Retrieved from Removal of Wabanaki Settlements in Maine. (arcgis.com)
[xx] Hodson, C. (2022). Marked by Exile: Trauma and the Grand Dérangement. Journal of New Brunswick Studies Revue d’études Sur Le Nouveau-Brunswick, 14(1), 83–98. Retrieved from https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/JNBS/article/view/32888
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