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. Georges 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the Solemn League and Covenant binding to non-intercourse with Great Britain until the Boston Port Bill should be repealed ; and in June, 1775, they formed a Committee of Safety and Correspondence.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 Fluckers 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-
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