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— Aroostook County —
D iscove r Ma ine
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How Ashland Got Its Name
by Charles Francis
The Kentucky/Missouri connection
shland, one of Aroostook County’s westernmost towns, was named to honor Senator Henry Clay. Today, high school students best know that southern politician as a War Hawk — a saber rattler who called for the United States to declare war on Great Britain in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Clay saw war with England as a way for the United States to annex all of British North America, as Canada was then known. Kentuckian Henry Clay also played an important role in Maine becoming a state. That is why, when it came to choosing a name for Township #11, Range 5 in 1862, the name the town
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fathers opted on at the time of incorporation was Ashland. Ashland was the name of Henry Clay’s Kentucky mansion and estate. John McHatton, an Ashland native, is a good friend of mine. I once asked him if he knew of his hometown’s connection to Henry Clay. He didn’t. Of course, that might have something to do with the fact that I was a U.S. history teacher and John was a math teacher. We were both teaching in the same high school at the time. Too, the fact that I knew why Ashland had been named might have had something to do with the fact that I had recently discovered that a branch of my family had been among the first set-
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tlers of the town, and what I really wanted was to know if John knew anything of them. Unfortunately, he didn’t. The relatives I was researching at the time were named Howe. The family patriarch of the Ashland branch of the family was one Benjamin Howe. Benjamin Howe was one of the very earliest settlers of the region, situated at the confluence of the Big Machias and the Aroostook rivers. It appears that the only settler to precede Howe in the area was William Dalton. Dalton is commonly thought to be the first settler of Township #11, Range 5. For this reason the township bore
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