Thomas Frazier

Frazer Point is seen in the top left and Norris Island is in the center, between 1850-1900.

Phillips Havey

Quick Facts

Significance:

first known free African American resident in Acadia National Park

Place of Birth:

unknown

Date of Birth:

unknown

Place of Death:

unknown

Date of Death:

unknown

Thomas Frazier is the first documented, free African American resident of Frazer Point in what we now call Acadia National Park.

At his homestead in current-day Winter Harbor on the Schoodic Peninsula, Frazer took advantage of the bountiful seascape -- he fished, farmed, hunted, trapped and some say operated a salt works.  

In 1780, Frazier enlisted in the American Revolutionary War in Captain Henry Dyer's company of rangers at Frenchman Bay. Later, records from the first U.S. Census in 1790 show him living with his wife Mary and seven children. Although he and his family are recorded in the next two U.S. Censuses in 1800 and 1810, as well as in town tax records, the Fraziers effectively disappear from the landscape by 1820. 

Frazer Point was probably named for the earliest recorded landowner - a London merchant named Thomas Frazer -- but one can only wonder where in history lies the connection between Thomas Frazier the free African American settler, and Thomas Frazer, the London merchant who seemingly never stepped foot on the land which now bears his name.