Mount Desert Island, situated on the eastern coast of Maine was first recognized and named by European explorers as early as 1604. The first recorded permanent settlement of this island was in 1762, by two Massachusetts sailor/fishermen named Abraham Somes and James Richardson when they established their homes at the northern shores of the fjord which today is called Somes Sound. Other settlers soon followed and within a few years after the Revolutionary War the population on the island amounted to several hundred people.
