Pemaquid, Maine

June 17, 2016

Dave’s great great aunt (his father’s mother’s mother’s sister) Helen Cogswell Trostel researched the Cogswell lineage and published her findings.  When planning for our visit to Maine, Dave remembered that there was some family connection to the Maine coast and we checked it out.

It turns out that Dave’s 10th great-grandfather, John Cogswell, sailed from Bristol, England to Pemaquid, Maine with his family in 1635 on the Angel Gabriel.  The family was safely ashore but belongings and livestock that were to be unloaded the next day were lost when a hurricane struck and sank the ship.  John Cogswell recovered a trunk which is on loan to a museum at Colonial Pemaquid.  The family did not settle in Maine, but moved to Massachusetts.  Research teams continue to search for the ship’s remains and John Cogswell’s £5,000.  That’s a present-day value of about £750,000 or almost one million dollars.

Markers about the Cogswells have been placed at Colonial Pemaquid State Historic Site and a the Pemaquid Point Lighthouse.

Information on the Angel Gabriel in the museum at Colonial Pemaquid.

John Cogswell’s chest in the museum at Colonial Pemaquid.

Description of the sea chest.

Dave with Aunt Helen’s book and the sea chest.
                 Dave with marker at Colonial Pemaquid.

                 Marker at Colonial Pemaquid

John’s Bay from Colonial Pemaquid

Across a cove in John’s Bay

Pemaquid Point Light with Cogswell family marker

                Jane climbed the Pemaquid Point Light.  Nervously.

Jane and Dave with a docent in the Pemaquid Point Light
                 Cogswell marker at Penaquid Point

Jane ready for a picnic at Pemaquid Point.