In 1774 John Parks, the first born son of lower gentry close to Sussex, England, stood in line for his inheritance. The one thing that stood between he and his parents was the woman he loved, Sarah Dickonson, a commoner of the merchant class. This made no difference to John as Sarah was both comely and uncommon. She was all of thirteen years old when her parents put her in a convent school to keep her away from John's attentions. She made the most of her two years of school, becoming proficient in math, reading and writing in a very short time. She was capable navigator and ran her father's business while he and John were away at sea. John married Sarah despite the protests of their parents. Perhaps knowing their marriage would never be met with approval by their parents they chose to come to the Colonies. Described as a "very handsome woman" Sarah would bear John thirteen children. Having received a partial inheritance as eldest son, he purchased a 90 foot sloop. It was their ticket to a new life so in 1774 they set sail from Hull for a journey to take them three months. They set aside six-hundred pounds silver to purchase land. This was perhaps all he dared spend to assure their safe passage. He and Sarah, after arriving on the shores of Massachusetts Bay, decided against staying in Salem because of a volatile political climate fomenting a revolution. They sailed up and down the Eastern coastline for nearly a year. John chose the wild, unsettled territory along the Kennebec River in the District of Maine where a man and his family might find a certain rural isolation from politics - and people - those who would take a man's possessions and land for religious or political reasons. He purchased a five square mile tract, including, and surrounding Fort Richmond and Swan Island on the Kennebec. It is also known that not long after their arrival they witnessed Benedict Arnold's march up the Kennebec, an ill-fated mission to take Quebec for the crown. There is also a family tale they gave sanctuary to a minister, Parson Bailey who was fleeing from an angry mob. They hid him in the boathouse until the wee hours of the morning when they spirited him across the river to safety.

Fort Richmond was once a French and Indian War garrison that had withstood fierce Indian attacks by the Abanaki tribe in the early 1700's. Fort Western, at what is now Augusta, Maine, in the 1750's then became the northernmost outpost of the British during the French and Indian War. Fort Richmond then became an Indian trading post but was abandoned in 1755.

When John Parks purchased this land in 1775 a tragedy would occur, the consequences of which would be visited upon his grandchildren. The land contractor from whom John had purchased Fort Richmond, Mr. Alyn, and his ship, went down in a storm on her voyage back to England. It wasn't until 1823 when Maine became a state that the burden of proof of the land purchase was upon James Parks, one of John's surviving sons. One of Mr. Alyn's descendants brought suit in a Canadian courtroom and the Parks' lost the case. The court ruled that the Parks' had only a life lease on the land. Without the deed as proof of purchase, John Parks' children, and grandchildren, were forced to purchase the land over again. Some were able to afford just a legacy and a reduced claim- without Swan Island. Most left the region. Those of John and Sarah's descendants who remained found themselves with their limited resources in an unforgiving climate.

Before 1823 life was never easy for the Parks family. The threat of Indian attacks lingered into the 18th century and cruel winters took their toll. Many were lost to tuberculosis, a devastating disease making a comeback today, but known to them as "consumption." John Parks died of tuberculosis in 1816, the year of the "Summer That Never Was," as there was a killing frost every month during the summer of 1816. It devastated crops and many were faced with heading into the winter having gone through their stores.

The People: Being from a hard-working, but educated class of English gentlemen farmers, John Parks felt he and his family stood a better chance for survival by this Kennebec River, a treacherous and bountiful commercial artery for the New England coastline. Very resourceful, industrious, and creative, John and Sarah struggled and overcame many challenges which people of today would be hard-pressed to endure. The British embargoes and other challenges facing our young nation forced New Englanders into becoming self-sufficient and industrious. Other people in this family line were the White's - Merrymeeting Bay settlers to this region with the Sir Robert Temple Colony in 1727. Temple was given a land grant by William of Orange after the English Revolution. They were Puritans of mainly Scottish descent - Scots-Irish who lived in what is now Bowdoinham, Maine. In the recorded history of the French and Indian War, there were a few of us, namely the Preble's, who were scalped and had their homes burned by warring Abanaki's.

They were river settlers of Northern New England. Many found trade in the shipbuilding industry and still do. Today Bath, Maine, located South of Richmond on the Kennebec, was once the shipbuilding capital of New England and is remembered for the finest wooden ships the world has ever known. Bath today is a still center for shipbuilding. They built clipper ships, schooners, sloops and other craft at the T.J. Southard Shipyard in Richmond. Percy and Small was another of the larger Shipyards near Richmond on the Kennebec. Small is related by marriage to this family line. Some among our family made living as sea captains and some, like Elihu Hatch were of famous as shipbuilders.

They were also farmers, fishermen, and lumbermen who were the courageous and sure-footed "River Riders" who would "ride" great logs through the dangerous tidewaters of the Kennebec. The Kennebec is the deepest river in the United States. Its great depth spawns tidal pools from deep ocean currents known to swallow small craft. The mighty Kennebec has earned its reputation as one of the most treacherous rivers in the United States for this reason. Some among the Parks family ran a lumber mill which used the force of the Kennebec's tidewaters to move the saw's blades. Ironically, all this lumbering would exacerbate the occurrence a certain type of flood called a "freshet" - a springtime flood known for breaking river ice floes that were sudden and devastating. A White family descendant is known to have lost his ice house in the freshet of 1886. Ice harvesting was big business in Richmond. Many found work carving blocks of ice from the Kennebec with their long saws. It was a bone-chilling, grueling labor of man and beast which fostered close friendships between a man and his horse. The ice harvest was an annual event that enjoyed its heyday before the days of refrigeration.

For one-hundred twenty-six years the Parks family ran the Parks Ferry (1808 to 1934 ) and a store at what is now Richmond, Maine. The Parks' were perhaps the first to offer their customers superior ferry service with the addition of a sail to their ferry. This is a typical example of applied Yankee ingenuity. The ship register at the Maine Maritime Museum pictures the Parks Ferry as one of the first sailing vessels built in the Kennebec Tidewater region. In addition to the Scots, Scots-Irish, Irish, English, Finns, Germans, and French Huguenots, who came to the Kennebec from the 1600's through the 1800's, the 19th century saw this region become home to a large population of Ukrainians, Czechoslovakians, and Russians fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution. If it weren't for these later immigrants, many of the fine old farmhouses in Richmond today would have been lost in the "Urban Renewal" craze of the 1960's.

The year 1934 brought a long era to an end when the Civilian Conservation Corps built a bridge across the Kennebec at Richmond. A new road was graded and a bridge built at the site of the old garrison. In one fell swoop "progress" as we call it, simultaneously wiped out the Ferry business and (as told), destroyed the graves of John and Sarah Parks, assumed buried there on the Banks of the Kennebec at Richmond near the site of the old fort. A family story recounts how the graves were paved over by a road graded for the bridge. Some believe engineers never knew the graves were there at all. Thus is our history lost. With the age of automobiles and refrigeration, this era was destined to be short-lived and much of the family dispersed from the region during these years leading up to the Great Depression.

Our branch of the family moved to Lafayette, Indiana where Purdue University attracted my Great Great Grandfather George Daniel Parks, A Civil Engineer and University of Maine graduate who was responsible for recruiting the first faculty at what became the Purdue University College of Engineering. His Sunday "parlor" was a popular weekly gathering spot among West Lafayette's intellectual community. As I understand some of the faculty were hired at the expense of the University of Maine at Orono.

Freethinking, resourceful, self-educated men and women, these people were stubbornly independent, and still are. The Parks' would never be dictated to nor assume to dictate the lives of others. The one intolerance found consistently among them was for that of underhandedness. After having sacrificed so much, through their harsh experiences, they guarded against it. They pursued freedom of conscience, self determination, self-sufficiency, and happiness in what most would like to think unchanged wilderness. This region of the Kennebec is still rural - bordering on wild. It remains much the same as it was in many ways. Perhaps descendants of John and Sarah Parks who remained still find work in farming, shipbuilding, and tourism. Many in my immediate and extended family became teachers, writers, scientists and artists. One of them, Marion Jaques Smith wrote of Maine history. Her book History of Maine, From Wilderness to Statehood was a textbook in Maine public schools and colleges for many years.

When I visited this place for the first time with my father in 1992 all the stories I had heard him tell for years came alive. Is it any wonder that I would be so inspired to write the song Banks of the Kennebec? Truly, I felt the earth, their earth, move beneath my feet. This is truly a land with a spirit and determined force of its own. It is country where the sea flows into the land and the land into the sea. Visiting the graves, standing on the ground in bare feet, I grounded to a place with which I share only a genetic memory. Familial waters run deep though, like the Kennebec river itself. Though we may not perceive them on the surface, they move with the blood in our veins. This land is truly a place where a person has to fight for one's survival and holds to freedom fiercely. The Parks Family never took their freedom lightly - they could never afford to.

Victoria Parks