Hosmer, An Historical Sketch of the Town of Deer Isle, Maine (1886)

Local history by a Deer Isle contemporary, read in the archive.org full text. Includes abstracts of the town records and lists of settlers, selectmen and aged persons (the “Aged Persons of Deer Isle” is also transcribed at https://archives.mainegenealogy.net/2007/01/aged-persons-of-deer-isle.html).

Used for:

• Thomas Thompson (pp. 25, 46-47, 223-224, 277, 289): settled “not far from the year 1765,” selectman, church elder, died “not far from the year 1824, aged upward of eighty years”; his wife “the sister of Mr. William Foster”; the list of their children. His widow died in 1836 aged 91 (p. 218). William Foster, blacksmith, from Dedham (p. 51).
• Major Nathan Low (pp. 143-144, 219): from “the county of Worcester” before 1800; tanner and farmer, “probably one of the most skilful farmers that was ever in the town”; militia major and selectman; wives Rebecca (d. 1836) and Hannah, daughter of Jonathan Hardy, “some forty years younger,” who “died in a few years after her marriage”; sons Thomas T., Nathan Jr. and William; “He died in 1859, at the age of ninety-four years.”
• A “Nathan Low” selectman in 1828 and 1829 (pp. 241-242), not saying which.
• Capt. Nathan Low (p. 144): “Nathan Low, Jr., who died a few years ago in consequence of the vessel of which he was then master having been run into by a steamer on the route from Portland easterly. Captain Low was thrown into the water, and being then nearly seventy years of age, the exposure caused his death shortly after. He was brought home, but lived only a few days.”
• Major Nathan Low’s house and lands (p. 143); “A brother of his in Massachusetts lived to be about one hundred years old”; “He acquired considerable property and settled his sons upon farms of which he was owner”; “None of the daughters remained here” (p. 144). One of sixteen men named 10 June 1815 “to assist the tithingmen of the town to enforce the due observance of the Sabbath, and suppression of intemperance,” with William Foster (pp. 236-237).
• From the town-meeting abstracts: votes for representative to Thomas T. Low (32, 1853) and Nathan Low (31, 1854); $50 in 1859 for “the road from near the house of William E. Knight to Nathan Low’s house”; “Nathan Low” on the 1864 committee for a permanent bridge at the old mill site; and $100 to Daniel W. Low in 1864 “as a compensation for having put … a substitute into the army for three years.”
• Capt. Edmund Sylvester of Marshfield and his son Crowell H. Sylvester (pp. 96, 124-125).
• Thomas Thompson and Joseph Tyler chosen to go to the General Court to buy the remaining island land, “they being unable to attend,” George Tyler and Levi Carman went instead (p. 36); the £100 raised in 1795 toward a meeting house, with Thompson one of three “to expend the said sum in providing suitable timber and other materials” (pp. 223, 280).
• William Foster, blacksmith from Dedham, brother of Mrs. Thompson: a 200-acre lot and thirteen children; “Of him Deacon Nehemiah Closson learned his trade” (pp. 51-52); selectman 1789-93 and 1802 (pp. 220-226).