Shepardsfield Plantation

Shepardsfield, Maine
Town
Plan of Shepardsfield Plantation
Overlay of Shepardsfield on Old Map
Country	United States
State	Maine
County	Oxford
Dissolved	1792

Shepardsfield Plantation was a colonial town in Oxford County, District of Maine, United States. The town's history has always been interconnected with Hebron. The population was 528 at the 1790 census.

It was granted on March 8, 1777 by the Massachusetts General Court to Alexander Shepard, Jr. of Newton, Massachusetts as payment for a survey chart of the Maine coast that he had assisted making. It was named Shepardsfield Plantation, although early inhabitants called it Bog Brook Plantation. The first settlers were Capt. John Bridgham, Capt. Daniel Buckman, John Greenwood (step-son of Alexander Shepard), and Asa Bearce. Other families followed; John Washburn, Morris Bumpus, and William Barrows, to name a few. Shepardsfield was a wilderness with fresh pastures near streams and ponds. It offered prosperity to many soldiers and their families fresh from the battlefields of the Revolutionary War. The Shepardsfield petitioners were successful in part, as the plantation was incorporated as Hebron, the 78th town, March 6, 1792, but no reason appears for not complying with their request to name the town Columbia; perhaps the General Court had in view the making a modern "city of refuge"—a part of Hebron was set off and incorporated as the town of Oxford in 1829.

The tract of land granted by the General Court of Massachusetts to Alexander Shepard Jr., lies between 44° 3' and 44° 14' N latitude and between 6° 20' and 6° 40' E longitude from Washington. This territory being so nearly equidistant from the equator and the pole, is not subject to long continued or excessive heat or cold, and as the wind seldom comes from any one point for more than three or four days successively, the various climatic changes attendant upon the wind, follow one another in rapid and agreeable succession. The title of the Commonwealth to this district is based upon ancient grants "for the advancement of the Christian religion and the glory of God, and to replenish the deserts with people who would be governed by laws and the magistrates," from the crown of England, in exercise of the right of eminent domain. Unlike most legislative grant, this to Mr. Shepard was for a tangible consideration, as the following abstracts from the records of the Court will show.