Gardiner, city, Kennebec county, southwestern Maine, U.S., on the Kennebec River (head of navigation) just south of Augusta and bounding the towns of Farmingdale, West Gardiner, and Richmond. Founded in 1754 by Sylvester Gardiner as Gardinerstown Plantation, it was set off from Pittston in 1760 and was incorporated as a town in 1803. By 1850, when it became a city, it had acquired shoe factories, paper mills, and woodworking shops. One of the first workable steam automobiles in America was built there in 1858. It was the boyhood home of the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935) and is considered to be the “Tilbury Town” of his poems. Laura E. Richards (1850–1943) lived in Gardiner, where she wrote many of her novels, including Captain January (1890). Pop. (2000) 6,198; (2010) 5,800.
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Maine, constituent state of the United States of America. The largest of the six New England states in area, it lies at the northeastern corner of the country. Its total area, including about 2,300 square miles (6,000 square km) of inland water, represents nearly half of the total area of…
Kennebec River, river in west-central Maine, U.S. The Kennebec rises from Moosehead Lake and flows south for about 150 miles (240 km) to the Atlantic Ocean. It was explored by Samuel de Champlain between 1604 and 1605. Fort St. George, founded in 1607 at the head of navigation on the…
Augusta, capital (1831) of Maine, U.S., seat (1799) of Kennebec county, at the head of navigation on the Kennebec River, 57 miles (92 km) northeast of Portland. The city’s establishment and early prosperity, which began with the arrival of traders from the Plymouth colony of Massachusetts in 1628, can be…
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Edwin Arlington Robinson, American poet who is best known for his short dramatic poems concerning the people in a small New England village, Tilbury Town, very much like the Gardiner, Maine, in which he grew up.…
John Reed SwantonJohn Reed Swanton, American anthropologist and a foremost student of North American Indian ethnology. His contributions to knowledge of the Indians of the southeastern United States significantly developed the discipline of ethnohistory. Swanton studied with anthropologist Franz Boas at Columbia…