Newfound Lake - Name Origin

Name Origin

The origin of the lake's name is a mystery. An uncertain tradition says that the Native Americans called it "Pasquaney", meaning "the place where birch bark for canoes is found". Multiple maps from the 1700s detail the lake but do not list a name. For example, when in 1752 Emmanuel Brown published a New and Accurate Map of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and New England, the lake was not referenced with a name. In 1755, Thomas Jefferys published a Map of the Most Inhabited Parts of New England with the lake shown, but still it had no name. Six years later, in 1761, a map called the Accurate Map of his Majesty's Province of New Hampshire detailed the map of the area without acknowledging the name of the lake.

In 1751, John Kendall and Jonathan Farwell participated in marking the western lands of the Masonian proprietors. At this time, they referred to lake as Newfound or Baker's Pond. In 1791, Jeremy Belknap referred to the lake as New Chester Pond in his History of New Hampshire. The first written records appear in 1766 when the New Chester proprietors refer to the lake as "Newfound pond".

In his poem "Pasquaney Lake", Bristol native Fred Lewis Pattee twice refers to Newfound Lake as Pasquaney.


Ah Loch Katrine,
Thy beauties have the bards of Scotia sung
From days untold;
And every clime has seen
Thy crystal pool by mountains overhung,

Thy tints of gold,—
But not for me thy charms fair Loch Katrine,
For I will dream my summer days away
Where on the beach the lazy ripples play
Of that sweet lake unsung and half unknown, —
Pasquaney, 'mid the forest dells alone.

Why cross the sea.
To view the Trossachs wild in Scotia's land ?
For mile on mile
The rugged mountains free
About my lake are piled on every hand,

And Ellen's Isle
Beneath a beetling cliff here one may see,
And bare and lone against the western skies
Behold the sentry peak Ben Ledi rise.
O that another "Wizzard of the North"
Might rise to sound their modest praises forth.



And bright Lemain,
The sad-souled Byron found delight in thee.
And every clime
Has joined in rapturous strain
To praise Fair Como, gem of Italy,

But no dark crime
Has dyed Pasquaney with unseemly stain,
For on my lake there stands no dark Chillon,
With dungeon towers to dim the rays of morn,
No haughty Rome has ever ruled by thee,
Thy streams are fetterless, thy waves are free.

O Mountain Lake,
Would I could free thee from a name uncouth,
And could restore
The name that thou didst take
From that dark race that loved thy lonely youth

In days of yore,
The name that hints of breezes half awake,
The voice of wild ducks sporting in the flags,
The trout's bold leap, the rustling birches' rags,
The honk of wild geese on an autumn noon.
The wild, unearthly laughter of the loon.

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