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English colonists sponsored by the Plymouth Company settled Maine and Acadia in 1607.
The original inhabitants of the territory that is now Maine were Algonquian-speaking peoples including the Wabanaki, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscots. The coastal areas of western Maine first became the Province of Maine in a 1622 land patent. The province within its current boundaries became part of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1652. The French named the area that includes Maine as Acadia. After the defeat of the French in the 1740s, the territory from the Penobscot River east fell under the nominal authority of the Province of Nova Scotia, and together with present day New Brunswick formed the Nova Scotia county of Sunbury, with its court of general sessions at Campobello.
The territory of Maine was confirmed as part of Massachusetts when the United States was formed, although the final border with British territory was not established until the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. In 1839 Governor Fairfield declared war on England over a boundary dispute between New Brunswick and northern Maine. Maine has fewer days of thunderstorms than any state east of the Rockies, with most of the state averaging less than 20 days of thunderstorms a year. Tornadoes are rare in Maine with the state averaging less than 2 a year, mostly occurring in the southern part of the state.
Maine is also one of the traditional provinces of France.