Linneus is a town in Aroostook County, incorporated on March 19, 1836 from Linneus township T2.
The land was granted to Harvard College in 1804, by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to endow a botany professorship and was named for the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778). A founder of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences and a physician, he established the basic method for classifying plants that is still in use.
The first settler, Daniel Neal, arrived in 1826, with others following a few years later encouraged by the establishment of a military post in Houlton and the building of a military supply road to that post.
