[GANONG] ” DOCHET (ST. CROIX) ISLAND 215 
We now come to some information, which, although resting upon 
tradition alone, is yet reliable since it comes within the memory of 
a still living witness. There is now (September, 1902) living at Red 
Beach, Maine, Mr. George Mingo, over 80 years of age but in pos- 
session of all his faculties, who, in early boyhood lived with his parents 
upon the island, and has known it intimately ever since. From him 
I have derived much information about the recent history of the 
island. The earliest owner he remembers was Stephen Brewer, and 
hence he must have lived there between 1826 and 1830. There were 
at that time on the island four buildings, standing where the old 
cellars! now are, at the south-western angle (Fig. 14), all occupied or 
used by his family. There was much cleared land and many signs 
of earlier settlement in fruit trees and bushes. The ruins of the 
old French settlement were clearly visible as was the place on the 
bluff where cannon had been placed. The Chapel Nubble was then 
united with the main island and a large pine tree stood upon it. 
Every summer there came to the island from the Penobscot River, 
four fishermen, named Black, Treat, Noble and Sanburn, who lived 
with the Mingo family and tended the six salmon weirs of which they 
had charge and from which many fish were taken. There were stages 
for the curing of fish here also, and, in fact, although the residents 
of the island did some gardening, fishing was the chief interest which 
took them to the island. Somewhere after 1830, perhaps consider- 
ably later, the Mingo family removed from the island. It is doubtless 
to this family Williamson refers in 1839 in his History of Maine 
(Vol. I., 189), when he says of the island, “Its soil is fertile, and it 
is usually the residence of one family.” After the Mingo family 
left it, there was for a time a resident named Treat, and later 
another named Chase. Later, one Thompson kept there a sort of 
public house of low repute, to which people resorted from Calais and 
elsewhere. These two latter residents gradually burnt up the older 
buildings for wood; they remained but a year or two, and then there 
were no more residents on the island until the lighthouse was built. 
For some time after this, however, the residents of the mainland 
used to remove from the island scow-loads of sand for building pur- 
poses, and this has contributed to the diminution in size of the lower 
end of the island and the separation of the smaller nubble from the 

1 There are some other cellars on the island (Fig. 14), that south of the 
lighthouse probably belonging to Haliker’s house. Other hollows on the 
island have a different origin, that north-east of the lighthouse being a pit 
from which sand was taken in erecting the buildings, and others being holes 
dug by money-hunters who have left such traces in most of the prominent 
places in this region. 
Sec. II., 1902. 14. 
