Aroostook War - Disputed Border

Disputed Border

The Treaty of Paris (1783) ended the American Revolutionary War but did not clearly determine the boundary between British North America (Canada) and the United States. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts thereafter began issuing land grants in its District of Maine, including the areas that the UK still claimed.

During the War of 1812, the British occupied most of eastern Maine, including Washington County, Hancock County, and parts of Penobscot County, Maine, for eight months, intending to permanently annex the region into Canada. The Treaty of Ghent ended the war in 1814 and reestablished the boundary line of Treaty of Paris (1783), but left the border ambiguities intact. The parties sent a collaborative survey team to locate and mark the source of the St. Croix River, the principal geographical feature identified in the earlier treaty. The eastern boundary of the United States ran north to the highland, where it met the Northwest Angle of Nova Scotia. A monument was put on the site where the waters passed through the Chiputicook Lakes.

When Maine broke away from Massachusetts in 1820 as a separate state, the status and location of the border emerged as a chief concern to the new state government. Massachusetts also retained an interest in the matter, as it retained half of public lands in Maine, including a large part of the disputed territory, as its property.

As late as September 1825, Maine and Massachusetts Land Agents issued deeds, sold timber permits, took censuses, and recorded births, deaths, and marriages in the contested area of the Saint John River valley and its tributaries. Massachusetts Land Agent George Coffin recorded in his journal during one such journey during autumn 1825, returning from the Upper Saint John and Madawaska area to Fredericton, New Brunswick, that a thunderstorm had ignited a forest fire. This Miramichi Fire destroyed thousands of acres of prime New Brunswick timber, killed hundreds of settlers, left thousands more homeless, and destroyed several thriving communities. The journal entries of the newly appointed Governor of New Brunswick record the destruction and comments that survival of New Brunswick depended on the vast forests to the west in the area disputed with the United States.