Born to loyalist parents in England in 1782, Robert Hallowell Gardiner graduated from Harvard College and moved to Kennebec in 1803 to manage land he had inherited.

He worked to free his land of legal entanglements and squatters and in the summer of 1804, he built a church, an inn, a mill and a wharf in the village, which became known as Gardiner. He was the town's first mayor. He died in 1864.