Fort Menaskoux

Fort Menaskoux (previously known as Newtown Fort) was a British colonial fort in present-day Arrowsic, Maine.

The first major settlement on Arrowsic Island, located east of the Kennebec River and west of the Sasanoa River in what is now southern Maine, was established by Major Thomas Clarke and Captain Thomas Lake in the 1650s. Located in the north of the island on the banks of the Sasanoa, Clarke and Lake operated an extensive business and a small community, engaging in fishing, lumbering, the raising of cattle, and trade with the local Native Americans.

On August 14, 1676, during King Philip's War, the Clarke and Lake settlement was attacked and destroyed by a band of Native Americans. The evening before, an Indian woman appeared at the door of the Clarke and Lake fort seeking shelter. She was admitted, and in the dead of night quietly opened the gate. In rushed warriors, and in the which followed, 30 colonists were either killed and scalped or taken into captivity. Captain Thomas Lake, Sylvanus Davis and two others seized a canoe and paddled to Parker's Island (now Georgetown), where all but Lake escaped alive from their pursuers. As the warehouse was looted and village burned to ashes, a brave sported the captain's hat. The Clarke and Lake settlement site is now of archaeological interest.

In 1679 Sir Edmund Andros, governor of the Province of New York, established a township called Newtown on the southern part of the island, to further a New York claim to the area. It was laid out with a common and, by order of the governor in 1688, a small, square palisaded fort named Fort Newtown was built on the ridge at the southern end of the island. But King William's War broke out in May 1689, and by July, Newtown was destroyed and abandoned.

Signed in 1713, the Treaty of Portsmouth brought a truce between the Eastern (Abenaki) Indians and English settlements. Newtown was reestablished in 1714, then incorporated in 1716 as Georgetown-on-Arrowsic, named after King George I. Eventually, the town's boundaries were extended to include Parker's Island, Stage Island and the Plantation of Nequasset (present-day Georgetown, Phippsburg, Bath, West Bath and Woolwich).

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