Lake Umbagog.
1907
August 8
The saw mill was soon in operation, supplying the
incoming settlers with white pine boards and timbers
which they used in the construction of their houses
covering the roofs with large hand split shingles of
the same cheap and abundant wood. Abbott lived
for a time in a log cabin but this was soon replaced
by the Umbagog House, a framed structure, which, with
the mills, was inherited by his son William I. Abbott,
whom I knew. The earlier settlers of Upton came chiefly
from Andover, Maine, in 1824 and 1825. The first party
"swamped" (ie built roughly) a road passable for carts as
they advanced through the forest. The farms about the foot
of the lake in Cambridge and those on the Lower Megalloway
were cleared and built upon not much if at all later than
those in Upton but by people who came mostly from Newry
and Bethel over a blazed trail that followed the valley 
of Sunday River for a considerable distance and entered Upton
by what is now known as Back Street. Those who pushed 
onto the Lower Megallaway reached it from Upton by means of a
path which led through the Tyler farm and past the
head of Sunday Cove. This afterwards became a rough
road which is still traceable in many places although
long since abandoned and grown up to trees and bushes. It
crossed Rapid River below Cedar Stump Landing by a
wooden bridge whose substantial stone piers are still intact
and in fairly good preservation.
First Settlement of the Region (2)
  As will appear from what I have just written the
settlement of the country about the foot of Lake Umbagog
was accomplished within a very few years and apparently
between 1823 and 1826 or 1827. Indeed I am assured
that nearly all the farms existing there at the present