Dissertation Progress!

I have been working on my PHD Dissertation for the past two years and have finally come up for air! I feel like I can finally see the end of the project! It is ending up as a sort of biography of a landscape and I'm a changed person. I've become very impressed by the early settlers of Maine and I have also become very attached to the little spot of land that I have been analyzing. It is amazing what people went through just to survive! I have met many descendants of these early folks and I can say that Maine people are still pretty amazing. They are well grounded and very practical folks. I have been surprised at the amount of "Scottishness" that I found in the early history. There were willing migrants, like David Thompson in New Hampshire, and the Scottish prisoners on the losing side of many a battle who were sent over to work as slaves for 7 years in the sawmills. After they did their time, they stayed. When the Scotch Irish got here from Ulster, they must have felt at home in many ways, including the people who were already here. They rapidly merged into the backcountry culture and the rest is history. I've found "General" Samuel Thompson of Brunswick to be an interesting historical figure-although he was ,typically, disparaged by his Puritan neighbors!