Belmont History

Waldo County, Maine Gen Web Site

Petition for the Incorporation of the Town of Belmont in the State of Maine

Incorporated February 5, 1814

(Excerpted form the “History and Genealogy of the Town of Morrill, Maine” by Robinson, Morse, and White with permission of the Morrill Historical Society. This information is also available from the public records of the General Court of Massachusetts)

The northerly part of Greene Plantation had become a flourishing community and the inhabitants thought it to be to their advantage to be incorporated into a town. A petition was circulated petitioning the General Court at Boston to be incorporated a town.

Petition for Incorporation

To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in General Court assembled. Humbley shews, Your Petitioners, Inhabitants of the Plantation of Greene, in the County of Hancock, and commonwealth aforesaid: That they are situated on the direct, and great road leading from Belfast to Augusta, in the County of Kenebec; that they are destitute of feasible roads, schools for the education of their children, and the necessary means of supporting the Gospel ministry; that they are rapidly increasing in population; that said Plantation now sustains upwards of nine hundred inhabitants; that there are many small children who are at present destitute of the means of procuring an education which will render them useful in this life, or will be beneficial in the world to come.

We your Petitioners do therefore pray that you will be pleased to incorporate said Plantation into a town by the name of Gilead, or other such name as you may think most proper, with all the privileges an immunities which are by law granted to other incorporate towns.”

“So that your petitioners may be enabled to make and repair new roads, raise the necessary funds, and make the requisite appropriations for the education of their children, in virtue, piety, and morality, and as in duty bound will ever pray”

Greene, April 28, 1813

A list of signers of the petition and signers is given in the the “History and Genealogy of the Town of Morrill, Maine”, by Robinson, Morse, and White, pages 11,12.

Town Name

The petition requested that the town be named Gilead, or other such name as the General Court deemed proper. As to why the name Belmont was chosen over Gilead in a letter submitted from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Secretary’s office on April 14, 1882 by Henry J. Coolidge to Joseph Williamson indicated that there were no records in the House and Senate Journals as to the name selection (page 13 of the above book). It was suspected by older inhabitants of the area that there was already a town by the name of Gilead in the Commonwealth and that when a member of the House of Representatives asked where the town lay it was answered that it lay between Belfast and Montville and was hence named Belmont.