Discovered in the 1500's by David Ingram.
The name Bangor was established in 1791. At that point in time, it was still a part of Massachusetts. The town had agreed on Sunbury as the future name. An organist named Noble was appointed to bring the petition to Boston to be approved. While waiting to be seen, he was humming his favorite tune, Bangor, a welsh hymn written in Tans'ur. When a court official asked Noble what his town wanted to be called, he was caught off guard still in his daydream and instead of saying "Sunbury" he said "Bangor". On February 25, 1791, Bangor had it's new name.
Did you know it was the lumber capital of the world in the late 1700's and early 1800's?
It saw many fights in the Revolutionary War and War of 1812. Let's just say...they didn't have much success.
Despite outnumbering the British, American Commodore Dudley Saltonstall ordered his men to flee up the Penobscot River after he and his men reached Castine on July 24. American ground troops, led by Paul Revere, abandoned their ships near Bangor and fled into the Maine woods, headed to the Augusta area. The British burned American ships in Winterport, about 15 miles from Bangor, leaving 20 ships to escape to the mouth of the Kenduskeag Stream in Bangor. Of the 20 ships that remained, the Americans scuttled 10.
Saltonstall was court-martialed for cowardice. In 1814, Bangor militiamen waited for British troops in the early hours of the day. They were quickly taken over by the British, luckily with few casualties to both sides and held prisoner for 30 hours. The reason for it's briefness, the British quickly became too intoxicating to keep hold of their prisoners, so left with all their cattle, crops, boats, and horses.
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