By David Harry
Staff Writer

One way to discover the history of Malaga Island is to sift through the shells.
“These guys threw everything into the front yard,” said Dr. Nathan Hamilton of the University of Southern Maine, who is researching former residents on the island in Casco Bay near Phippsburg.
Hamilton, an associate professor of archaeology, and his colleague, Dr. Robert Sanford, chairman of the university’s environmental science department, have spent the past half-decade digging through layers of oyster and clam shells to reveal what life was like for 40 islanders forcibly evicted in 1912 by state officials.
Hamilton said they may have excavated no more than 2 percent of the island, but the wealth of artifacts, including more than 400 fish hooks, reveals life was hard on the island even before the evictions.
“There are times when things were good, but people here were much more hand to mouth,” Hamilton said.
Historical maps and archeological finds date the origins of the community on Malaga Island to just after the Civil War. The island was first purchased by Phippsburg resident Eli Perry in 1818 for $150, according to a history by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, owners of the island since 2002.
Malaga Island was settled by the descendants of Benjamin Darling, born a slave and given his freedom in 1794. Darling and free-born blacks settled on islands throughout eastern Casco Bay. Hamilton said Malaga Island was settled as much for its fishing operations as a community.
In 1880, the island population was 27, according to the MCHT history. By 1900, the population reached 40, with more children and families inhabiting the island.
The Malaga Island population was distinctive because of its racial composition of blacks, white and mixed-race inhabitants. Newspaper accounts from the time exaggerated the origins of islanders while officials, including Gov. Frederick Plaisted, questioned the islanders’ moral character.
Hamilton said clues left by islanders show a population much like any other rural fishing community where making a living could be difficult.
“If you didn’t know, there is nothing about the ceramics to say anything about ethnicity,” Hamilton said about artifacts on from the island.

Each summer since 2006, Hamilton and Sanford have led groups of students to Malaga Island. Each fall, shards of glass and ceramics, pieces of pipe, bullet casings, shotgun shells, buttons and fish hooks are bagged, cataloged and stored in Bailey Hall on the USM Gorham campus.
“This is as close to a hunting and gathering society that is not Native American as we can get,” Sanford said.
Bones and shells on the island show residents sometimes landed large cod and swordfish, but also had no aversion to keeping undersized lobsters, Hamilton said.
Life on Malaga Island could be harsh, and Sanford said islanders likely went to the mainland to find work to supplement fishing and for commerce because there were no stores on the island.
As the community developed, so did tensions with mainland residents. Hamilton attributes the conflicts to developers eying coastal Maine areas for resorts and mansions and growing reform movements to deal with poverty.
According to the MCHT history, scientific notions about eugenics and racial superiority led to quarreling among mainland residents in Phippsburg and Harpswell over which town owned the island and which town was responsible for the welfare of islanders who might need economic assistance.
Hamilton said the island was characterized after the fact as a closed community, but even as efforts to remove islanders gained steam, there was still plenty of interaction between the island and mainland.
In 1903, the state decided the island was part of Phippsburg, but then repealed the decision in 1905, effectively making the island and residents wards of the state, said the MCHT history.
A school was built in 1909 and Plaisted visited the island in 1911. While quoted as saying it would be wrong to evict the residents, the state awarded the island to heirs of Eli Perry soon after and ordered its residents to leave by July 1, 1912. The state bought the island for $471 and resold it in 1913, providing some assistance to islanders who had to move.
As part of the eviction process, state officials surveyed island residents about their physical and mental health and economic status. At least eight islanders were sent to a new state facility called “The Home for the Feeble-Minded,” which later became Pineland Center in New Gloucester.
It was not just the living who were removed from the island: The state exhumed graves on Malaga Island and reinterred the remains at Pineland Cemetery.
One of the last island inhabitants, Lottie Marks Blackwell, died in 1997, according to the MCHT.
As they excavated island history, Sanford and Hamilton said they found a community that may have been unique for its racial makeup, but was typical of fishing villages.
“They were down pretty low,” Sanford said. “But they were surviving, getting by and taking care of their own.”