BDN writes about UMaine location on Marsh Island
The Bangor Daily News wrote a feature story explaining how the University of Maine came to be located on Marsh Island. According to the article, the island itself is named for John Marsh, a surveyor and settler who in the 1760s became friendly with the local Penobscot people, who at the time had their main settlement on Marsh Island. “This is a time where there aren’t many settlers around, and Marsh developed a relationship with the Penobscot — he learned the language, he worked with them,” said Darren Ranco, chair of Native American programs at UMaine and a member of the Penobscot Nation. Marsh and his descendants kept expanding their development of the island as the decades passed and pushed the Native people onto nearby Indian Island, today the reservation for the Penobscot people. Marsh Island was entirely out of Native hands by the middle of the 19th century and belonged to both private landowners and the state of Maine. When the Morrill Act was signed in 1862, 660 acres of Marsh Island eventually became what is today known as the UMaine in 1865.