Punkintown (or Punkin Town), once known as Emerytown, Emery Town, or Emeryville, was a village situated at the corners of South Berwick, Eliot, and York, Maine from the 1800s through the early 1900s. At its peak, between seven and ten families gave the small town its population of somewhere between 30 and 40 people. The families operated sawmills, a granite quarry, and a gristmill. Its main water source was York Pond, which bordered the village to the north. The town was located on a main road connecting Dover, NH to York, ME. To this day, this part of Eliot is still referred to as the "Punkintown section." History In 1693, Major Charles Frost and James Emery set up a water-powered sawmill on Stoney Brook, which is part of the York River in Eliot, Maine. John Heard acquired an interest in this mill, which he later deeded to son-in-law Captain Nathan Bartlett in 1725, who ended up with half of Stoney Brook and a one-third interest in the sawmill. By the late 1700s Ebenezer Bartlett, great-grandson of Captain Nathan Bartlett, was running a mill on Stoney Brook. As the mills became more productive, other families moved to Punkintown to find jobs. By the early 1800s, seven or eight families had built homes near the mills that supported them. The Ebenezer Plaisted house was by far the largest of these homes. While the mills were in operation the town and its residents were prosperous. Due to advancing technology, the water-powered mills began closing down starting around 1850. By 1886 there were one gristmill and two sawmills along the west branch of the York River. Residents had already begun leaving. Those who stayed in Punkintown continued to make a living farming, harvesting wild berries, and taking on small jobs. Many of the tiny town's inhabitants often traveled to South Berwick to sell their goods near the rail lines. They grew their own food and tended their own land. They were self-sufficient and didn’t have any problems growing anything. Some of today's older, local residents still remember Punkintown's villagers coming to their homes to sell fruits and vegetables. Punkintown's seven main families were the Plaisteds, Lords, Emerys, Simpsons, Paynes, Decoffs, and Wilsons. The Payne family consisted of three sisters, one of whom—the cross-eyed Emma Jane—was particularly notorious, known to have wandered around South Berwick until possibly as late as the 1960s. She'd walk for