BANGOR (AP) – Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has ties to western and central Maine dating back nearly 200 years.

Palin’s maternal ancestors lived at various times in Abbot, Industry, Farmington and Winslow, the Bangor Daily News reported, citing U.S. Census records. The paper conducted a genealogy search of the major party candidates, and Palin was the only one with ancestral ties to the state.

Palin, the governor of Alaska, campaigned Thursday in Bangor, which is about 60 miles east of the Piscataquis County town of Abbot, where her ancestors lived for more than four decades in the 19th century.

James Gower, Palin’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, and his wife, Susannah, lived in Industry and Farmington in Franklin County before moving to Abbot, the paper reported.

Gower was doing business in Abbot as early as 1822, when he bought a sawmill and built a gristmill, according to a history compiled by a group of Abbot residents.

They had 12 children, many of whom later scattered. Among the children who lived in Abbot as adults were sons Robert, Davis and Cornelius, who was Palin’s great-great-great-grandfather.

In 1850, Cornelius and wife Abigail were farmers in Abbot, raising three children, according to census records. Two years later, Arthur Collins Gower – Palin’s great-great-grandfather – was born in Abbot.

Cornelius later moved his family to Winslow in Kennebec County, then Ann Arbor, Mich.

Palin’s mother, Sarah Heath of Wasilla, Alaska, told the newspaper she was fascinated to learn she had ancestors from Maine. “It’s so interesting,” Heath said by phone Wednesday night.

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