Gazetteer of the State of Maine With Numerous Illustrations, by Geo. J. Varney

BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY B. B. RUSSELL, 57 CORNHILL. 1882. Public domain image from

308    GAZETTEER    OF    MAINE.

Among the names of tbese were Patterson, Boggs, Creighton, Starrett,
Spear, Lermond, McIntyre, Robinson, andKallock,—still represented in
these towns. Mr. Waldo in the same year rebuilt the saw-mill at Mill
River; in 1740, be erected a grist-mill at Oyster River, and erected a
house for religious meetings. About this time he also located 40 lots
on the western side of the river, on what is now Cushing, about 30 of
which were at once occupied. In 1743 a settlement was effected in
what is now Friendship (then Meduncook), by several families of
English Puritan extraction. In 1744, an Indian war again visited the
eastern regions, and the inhabitants again endured the horrors of savage
warfare. In 1745 occurred the famous expedition which resulted in
the capture of Louisburg. In the land force Waldo, who had some
time previously become a militia colonel, bore the rank of Brigadier
General. With the return of peace, prosperity again smiled upon the
settlement. In 1753, General Waldo settled another colony of twenty
Scottish families some two miles from the river on the western side.
•Anderson, Dicke, Crawford, Malcolm and Kirkpatrick are the names of
some of them. They called their settlement Stirling, and the name
still adheres to the locality. Again from 1754 to 1758 an Indian war
raged in Maine, to the great distress of the St. George’s settlers. With
the fall of the French power in the north, the Indians realized that
they could no longer contend with the English, and in the treaty with
them which closed this war they acknowledged they had forfeited their
lands, and all contention ceased. General Waldo died in 1759, and
the larger part of this patent came into the hands of his son-in-law,
Thomas Flucker, of Boston.

At the breaking out of thejtevolution, the inhabitants of this region
were generally found on the patriot side. All signed the “ Solemn
League and Covenant” binding to non-intercourse with Great Britain
until the Boston Port Bill should be repealed ; and in June, 1775, they
formed a Committee of Safety and Correspondence. After the
failure of the expedition against the British at Castine in 1779, General
Peleg Wadsworth, the second in command of the land forces, had his
headquarters as commander of the Eastern Department at Thomaston.
It happened by the expiration of enlistments that he was at one time
left with only a body-gnard of six men, when his house was attacked
in the night by twenty-five British soldiers from Castine. After %
brave resistance the General was wounded and carried as prisoner to
the British garrison at Castine. After being for some months in con-
finement there, he together with a companion in misfortune—Majcr
Benjamin Burton — escaped during a severe thunder storm; and,
crossing the Penobscot, quickly found safety among their countrymen.

At the close of the war, there was much uncertainty in regard to
land titles. Thomas Flucker, the heir of General Waldo, had espoused
the cause of the king, and was theiefore included in the act of pros-
cription. In a few years, such portion of the patent as had not been
disposed of, came into the possession of Flucker’s son in law, General
Henry Knox. On resigning his commission as secretary of war in
1795, he removed to the mansion he had prepared in Thomaston. The
mansion, to which Mrs. Knox had given the name, Montpelier, was
opened with a grand feast, to which were invited all the neighboring
inhabitants—rich and poor ; and here he continued for the remainder of
his life to dispense t'he most bountiful hospitality. Among his dis-