Radio Script #1147

Little Talks on Common Things
January 8, 1978

Several times during the years that this program has been on the air, we have mentioned the pioneer leader of Colonial Maine, Sir William Pepperell. It is time now that we told you more about this distinguished man. Sailing from the same Port of Plymouth, England, from which the Pilgrims set forth in 1620. The first William Pepperell came to America in 1676. Today, on Appledore Island of the Isles of Shoals off Kittery, is a tablet inscribed tithe island home of Hon. William Pepperell.

Today, when summer is past, it is a bleak spot, but it was once well inhabited. Not far from the location of Pepperell’s house are foundation stones that are all that remain of a village. In the 17th century the island was a refuge for those who had to flee Indian attacks on the mainland. It was also a well known place for the drying of fish. It was in fact the fishing industry that attracted the first William Pepperell to the island. He had come from an Englishtown where fishing was the principal livelihood, and through that business in his American settlement, Pepperell laid the foundation of the family fortune.

Shortly after his arrival in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, William Pepperell married the daughter of a prosperous shipbuilder, John Bragg of Kittery. He was then 32 years old. Two years later he built on Appledore the largest residence north of Boston. He had two daughters and six sons, was a colonel of militia, county treasurer, representative to the legislature, and a judge. He died in 1732 at the age of 87, possessed of a fleet of schooners and much Maine land.

Pepperell’s son was given his father’s name, William, and it was that second William Pepperell who became the most famous member of the family. He was by far Maine’s leading and most wealthy citizen in the middle of the 18th century. He was born in 1696, when his father had already become a wealthy man. When young William reached manhood, he was already active in his father’s extensive business, and after his father’s death, he continued to expand that business. By 1750 the young William Pepperell was sending ships to the Caribbean, across the Atlantic, into the North Sea and the Mediterranean. Those ships helped to make Europe aware of American trade. Rum, molasses and lumber were their chief cargoes to Europe, and they brought back goods from British factories, foreign fruits and wines, and probably negro slaves.

The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 brought an armistice in the long struggle between England and France, and assured a period of peace with the Indians in the colonies. But troubles with French and Indians were by no means over. The ink on the treaty was barely dry when Indian troubles again beset Maine. This time the Indian association with the French was even more vigorous. A constant menace to the English settlements was the French fortress of Louisburg on Cape Breton island. It was considered impregnable, and useless to attack. When in 1744 war broke out again in Europe between England and France, Governor Shirley of Massachusetts Bay warned all towns in the province, especially those in Maine, of the danger of attacks issuing from Louisburg.

In the next year, 1745, despite its reputed impregnability, the Governor decided that, at all costs, Louisburg must be attacked. To command the expedition he appointed Colonel William Pepperell of Kittery. Before he was 25, Pepperell had been a captain of a cavalry unit in the colonial militia, and by 1745 he had become a colonel. He had served several years as Kittery’s representative to the legislature in Boston, and he was Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Court of Pleas. His prominence as a merchant and shipowner had made his name known all over the province.

On March 24, 1745, Pepperell sailed from Boston with 4,300 troops bound for Louisburg. His land troops were to be assisted by a West Indies squadron of vessels furnished by the British admiralty under command of Commodore Peter Warren. On May 1, with Warren’s fleet offshore, Pepperell landed his troops for the attack. On June 16 the fort surrendered and over its ramparts flew the flag of England. Public celebrations followed in Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Honors were heaped upon the expedition’s leader and William Pepperell was created a knight by the king. Towns were named after him – Pepperell, Massachusetts and Pepperellboro, Maine.

Louisburg had been captured because Pepperell was bold enough to depart from accepted patterns of warfare. Louisburg was indeed impregnable from the sea, but on the land side the French placed too much reliability on the marshes, in-which they were sure horses and oxen would be bogged down trying to pull heavy cannon to within gunshot of the fort. But by using large numbers of draft animals, Pepperell did get his guns across. In two weeks the fort so felt the continued bombardment from the fleet in front and Pepperell’s guns in the rear, and with all supply lines cut off, that surrender was the result.

When Sir William returned to Kittery, his military fame made further increase in his already considerable fortune even more secure. To the home he had inherited from his father, he made extensive additions ornamented by some of the best woodwork of skilled carpenters. He laid out extensive formal gardens between the mansion and the huge Pepperell wharves on the shore, where also stood the counting house in which the shipping business was conducted.

Behind the house he erected a tomb made of marble brought from Europe. On it was carved the coat of arms of the family, to which was added the element authorized when William Pepperell was knighted by King George II in 1746. Sir William, who had once enjoyed being rowed across the Piscataqua in Governor Winthrop’s barge, now acquired a barge of his own, propelled by liveried Negro oarsmen. He also had a dozen negro servants in the mansion in Kittery. In the 1750s those servants were of course slaves.

William Pepperell had by that time become a British baronet, a national military hero, a wealthy merchant and landowner of an enormous tract extending from the Piscataqua to the Saco, and more than a hundred miles inland. To crown his honors, he was made Acting Governor of Massachusetts Bay, pending the arrival of a new governor from England.

In the American colonies in the 18th century, the wealthy really put on airs. An example of this is shown by a letter written to William Pepperell by his son-in-law Nathaniel Sparhawk, when Pepperell was still in the captured fort at Louisburg: “In order to appear in character as a prospective baronet, you must have a chariot and four horses and a powdered servant or two behind it when you travel. This should be ready for you on your return. Do you not wish to send to England for a suit of regimentals? We shall arrange a great procession when you arrive here, and you ought to dress at that time as a general.”

In 1755 the defeat of Braddock at Fort Duquesne aroused the colonies to commence activity against the French. Sir William was called upon to train a regiment in Maine for the British army. But when the regiment left for, Niagara where fighting was most imminent, Pepperell was ill and could not accompany it. He had contracted rheumatic fever in the marshes at Louisburg and it never left him. When, in 1758, he was promoted to Lt. General in the royal army, he was the first American to receive that honor. William Pepperell fell fatally ill in 1759, Governor Pownall of Massachusetts Bay came from Boston to Kittery to visit the dying baronet. Sir William died in July, 1759 at the age of 63.

Sir Wlliam Pepperell became a close friend of George Whitefield, the noted evangelist who preached through all the American colonies in the 18th century. Whitefield had been entertained in the Pepperell mansion and had furnished the motto for the Louisburg expedition. Pepperell was also a close friend of Jonathan Edwards, the best known of New England preachers. They had been friends for some time when Pepperell became especially interested in Edwards’ mission to the Indians established at Stockbridge. When dissonance drove Edwards from his pastorate at Northampton, Pepperell furnished the funds to make the mission a comfortable retreat for Edwards, where he wrote his famous treatise concerning the Freedom of the Will.

We usually think of early Maine settlements as decidedly primitive, inhabited by crude, uneducated pioneers. Such was by no means uniformly the case. The Pepperells provided an example of the fact that there was considerable culture in early Maine. The Pepperells were, of course, products of their time, with the conventional attitudes toward family life and property, as well as toward the evangelistical piety of colonial New England. Yet, in many respects they were ahead of their time, especially in their cosmospolitanism and learning.

By the time of the Revolution there were other families as wealthy as the Pepperells, but none who exerted greater influence in the region where they lived. What marked Sir William was his ability to accept new ideas. He welcomed the new, relaxed discipline in the British army, and under his command no soldier was ever flogged. In an age hardly renowned for philanthropy, Sir William was a gracious dispenser of his wealth. Among the many bequests in his will was a fund for the poor of Kittery, and another establishing a free school. Perhaps his most gracious act was the freeing of his slaves. Sir William Pepperell was like the modern firm of Merill Lynch on being bullish on America. That faith was manifested by continual investments in the colony rather than in England, and by his building mills and erecting homes for settlers, giving them free quit-claim deeds after appropriate years of residence.

But, best of all, as an economic asset to the new nation about to be born, was the Pepperell development of foreign trade.
The Pepperell story began in Plymouth, England and closed beside the Piscataqua in America. It is linked by two lands washed by the same ocean, bound together by language, commerce, and common interests. The Pepperell story depicts the prelude to a new nation in a new world.

Year: 1978