The "Plymouth Grant" also known as the "Kennebec Purchase" extended fifteen miles east and west of the Kennebec River. It began south at Merrymeeting Bay where the Androscoggin River enters the Kennebec, and extended north to what is now Skowhegan. Many towns were incorporated within these boundries in the mid to late 18th century, but the first to be settled away from the Kennebec waterway was Pondtown.
     Timothy Foster first came in 1764 and settled in an existing hunter's camp on Cobbossee Conte Great Pond. The next year he brought his wife and 10 children. More settlers from Massachusetts followed, and proceeded to clear their land, plow the virgin soil and plant. The crops were light, and they might have starved had it not been for milk, game and wild fruit. In 1765 three Whittier brothers, Thomas, Nathaniel and William, came from Chester, New Hampshire to that part of Pondtown, now Readfield, and felled twenty acres of trees before returning to New Hampshire. The next spring they returned and burned their fallen trees which alarmed those who were not familiar with this type of clearing by fire. The Whittiers cut that part of the land which had not been consumed by the fire, planted their corn in unplowed land, and returned to New Hampshire. Many thought that the brothers were inept farmers at best for planting this way, but as summer progressed the corn sprang up and grew. People came from miles around to see with their own eyes that planting without plowing produced results. That fall the Whittiers returned to harvest a good crop, while the other settlers digested their lesson about farming in the wilderness.