Malaga Island, in the New Meadows River just off Phippsburg, is associated with one of the most shameful episodes in Maine history: the treatment and forced removal of the island’s Black and mixed-race residents.
Benjamin Darling, a formerly enslaved man, bought nearby Horse Island in 1794. His son Isaac later sold it and probably moved to then-unoccupied Malaga Island in 1847. Historian William David Barry observed that Black residents living in midcoast Maine had not been considered a significant social issue during the region’s earlier frontier period.
“Any skin color—other than red—was acceptable in those frontier days. In fact, Maine showed little anti-Black feeling until the early nineteenth century, and then mostly in Portland.”William David Barry, “The Shameful Story of Malaga Island,” p. 55
For much of the nineteenth century, the developing island community was largely left to itself. Conditions changed during the 1880s and 1890s as the Maine coast became an increasingly popular tourist destination. Summer homes, resorts, roads, and boat services spread along the shoreline.
Maine writer Holman Day described how nonresident resort development had transformed access to the coast, where cottages and “no-trespass” signs increasingly occupied headlands and islands.
Prejudice and public pressure
During this period, discriminatory ideas about poverty, race, disability, and so-called “degeneracy” influenced public policy. Malaga’s struggling residents came to be treated as an embarrassment by people promoting a more exclusive image of the Maine coast.
Local newspapers gave increasing attention to life on the island in the early twentieth century. Civic groups attempted to assist residents, though with limited effect. After visiting Malaga, Day wrote in the September 1909 issue of Harper’s Monthly that the residents were not vicious and extended hospitality “with touching warmth and sincerity.”
Removal in 1912
As pressure to “clean up” the island mounted, the State of Maine acquired Malaga. Beginning in 1911, officials placed some residents in the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded, later known as Pineland Center, in Pownal. Historical research has shown that residents were swept into institutions under the era’s discriminatory assumptions.
In 1912, the state offered the remaining residents between $50 and $300 for their homes. Forty-five people were evicted, and all buildings on the island were destroyed. The removal broke apart families and erased a community that had occupied the island for generations.
In the twenty-first century, historians, descendants, museums, and educators have returned attention to Malaga Island. Their work examines the islanders’ lives, the forces behind the eviction, and the need to acknowledge the state’s actions.
