The Come Spring tour is a self-guided ten mile tour to homesites and history of Union’s first settlers. Also know as the Come Spring Heritage Trail.
This map is available through the Union Historical Society at http://www.midcoast.com/comespring/Heritage.html or on Meandering Maine by clicking HERE.
All sites listed are located on private property. Please respect the owners' privacy and property rights.
Picture from the Union Historical Society.
A history tour is a great, FREE educational outing you can do during school vacation or any time of year. If you don’t live near Union, make it a day trip or go to your local, Maine Historical Society and make your own self-guided historical tour.
Here are some photos of our little trip around Union today.
The Come Spring Heritage Trail starts at -
A glimpse of Seven Tree Pond can be seen between the pine trees on the right.
Robbins House, 343 Common Rd. - (circa 1840), home of the Union Historical Society, chartered in 1972, and of the Vose Library.
Old Common Cemetery – “The First Burial Place”, part of Josiah Robbins' land, became the “Old Burying Ground'' in 1791. Many original settlers and their descendants are buried there. It is worth walking up the hill for the view and to find the graves of Philip Robbins, Mima and Joel Adams and other early settlers.
The St George River - the river was the highway of the early settlers and was traveled by canoe in summer and by foot on the ice in winter. The St George River watershed, fed by a tributary from Quantabacook Lake, flows from Lake St George to the sea beyond Thomaston; the road you are traveling is a designated Scenic Byway.
Hawes Farm – one of the oldest homesteads in Union, still farmed by the descendants of Moses Hawes.
Come Spring Farm – on the site of Jessa Robbins home. The son of Philip Robbins, Jessa married Jemima Adams, who became Union’s first schoolteacher and was the sister of Joel Adams.
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View across Round Pound from Come Spring Farm.
Horses on Come Spring Farm.
View of the Hawes Farm from Come Spring Farm.
The core of this house is David and Bess Robbins home – (1776) son and daughter-in-law of Philip and Jemima Robbins, parents of stillborn Silence and of the first-born son and first-born daughter in Union.
Seven Tree Pond can be seen behind the house.
Ezra W. Bowen home - (1777) the last cabin before the Warren line, built on land purchased from Philip Robbins. Bowen's wife “Prance'' (Experience) died in 1803 on the birth of her 11th child.
At the top of the hill at Millay Corner (1.1 miles) the road turns left at the Old Millay Hill Farm, home of poet Edna St Vincent Millay's grandparents.
Elisha Partridge home – Partridge and his wife Sally bought land from Col. Wheaton. Later the house was a stagecoach stop on the route from Wiscasset to Belfast.
Information was quoted from the Union Historical Society.
All sites listed are located on private property. Please respect the owners' privacy and property rights.
Please send us your Maine, self-guided history tours. We will post your pictures to our blog. Send pictures and/ or text to info@meanderingmaine.com.
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Union's early history comes alive through this well-written and thoroughly researched historical novel about the pioneers Mima Robbins and Joel Adams. Author Ben Ames Williams based his work on the material and anecdotes in Sibley's History of Union, and on his own research. He claimed to have walked all the paths covered in Come Spring. A prolific writer of fiction, Williams published this work in 1940. In 1990 Union Historical Society celebrated the anniversary of publication with a symposium which was attended by Williams' family members. A young maple tree was planted on the Common with a memorial plaque and commemorative mugs with the Come Spring logo of flying geese were made by Union Stoneware. (Quoted from Union Historical Society).
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