Archaeologists believe Penobscot,  Passamaquady, and Kennebec tribes are descendants of earlier native groups that started living in Maine 2,500 years ago. A French explorer named Samuel de Champlain wrote about the advanced farming strategies of Indians he watched near Biddeford when he charted the coastline of Maine in 1604.

Jewish

Historians believe Jews were living in the Portland area in the first half of the 1700ís. In the beginning of the 1800ís most of the Jews were from Germany and they made a living as peddlers.
 
 

African Americans

In 1794 a black man named Benjamin Darling bought an island off Phippsburg and his descendants later formed a community on nearby Malaga Island. An article in the Portland Sunday Telegram on June 5th 1938 titled "Burial On Family Lot Reward For Loyal Glouster family:'Peter's Grave'" talks about a young boy brought from Africa and perchased by a Glouster family.

Irish
The Irish people moved to Maine in 1675. A lot of Irish people came to Maine in 1847 trying to escape the great potato famine. Some of them went to Bangor to make a living in the lumber and building industry. And most of the others went to Lewiston to dig canals and build dams.  And the people who didn't go to Bangor or Lewiston went to Portland to work on docks and railroads.

Scotch-Irish

In 1718 a ship arrived in Casco Bay carrying 20 families from Ireland who originally fled Scotland in the 1600ís. By the beginning of the 1700ís, there were large numbers of Scotch-Irish living in Maine.