Peleg Wadsworth

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Peleg Wadsworth

Place of birth	Duxbury, Massachusetts
Place of death	Hiram, Maine
Rank	Brigadier General
Battles/wars	American Revolutionary War Battle of Lexington and Concord Battle of Long Island Penobscot Expedition
Relations	Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Other work	Congressman

Peleg Wadsworth (May 6, 1748 – July 18, 1829) was an American officer during the American Revolutionary War and a Congressman from the District of Maine. He was also grandfather of noted American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Wadsworth was born in Duxbury, Massachusetts, to Peleg and Susanna (Sampson) Wadsworth. He graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. (1769) and an A.M. (1772), and taught school for several years in Plymouth, Massachusetts, with his former classmate Alexander Scammel. There he met Elizabeth Bartlett (1753 to 1825), whom he married in 1772.

[edit] American Revolutionary War

The Wadsworths lived in Kingston, Massachusetts, until 1775, when Wadsworth recruited a company of minutemen, of which he was chosen captain. His company marched to battle April 20, 1775, in response to the alarm of April 19, 1775, and the Battle of Lexington and Concord on that day.

Wadsworth served as aide to Gen. Artemas Ward in March 1776, and as an engineer under Gen. John Thomas in 1776, assisting in laying out the defenses of Roxbury, Massachusetts. He was present at the Battle of Long Island on August 1, 1776. He was made brigadier general of militia in 1777 and Adjutant General of Massachusetts in 1778.

Wadsworth's finest military engagement was in one of the worst American military defeats of the war. In the summer of 1779 he served as second in command to General Solomon Lovell over the land forces sent to make a combined arms attack on the British fort at Castine, in the so-called Penobscot Expedition. Commodore Dudley Saltonstall was in command of the naval forces. Lt. Colonel Paul Revere also served in this expedition as commander of artillery. While General Lovell remained aboard the Commodore's vessel, Wadsworth and Revere landed with the infantry and artillery and laid siege to the fort for about two weeks. Due to the reluctance of the Commodore to launch a naval attack in support of the ground forces, the British garrison held out until ships of the Royal Navy arrived from Halifax and drove the American Navy up the Penobscot River where all 43 American warships were sunk or were scuttled and burned, comprising most of the American fleet, making it the worst American naval disaster prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Wadsworth, still with the forces on shore organized and led a successful overland retreat through the Maine frontier. Colonel Revere and Commodore Saltonstall were court-martialed for their roles in the debacle (Revere was acquitted, Saltonstall was "dismissed the service").

In March 1780, Peleg was given command of all the troops raised for the defense of the Province of Maine. On February 17, 1781, British soldiers overran his headquarters in Thomaston. Wadsworth was captured and imprisoned in Fort George at Bagaduce (Castine) (the same fort he had led the attack against in the summer of 1779), but he and fellow prisoner Maj. Benjamin Burton eventually escaped by cutting a hole in the ceiling of their jail and crawling out along the joists. Wadsworth then returned to his family in Plymouth, where he remained until the war's end.

[edit] After War Years

In April 1784 Wadsworth returned to Maine, purchased 1.5 acres (6,000 m²) of land on Back Street (now Congress Street in Portland), engaged in surveying, and opened a store in early 1785. There he also built a house, now the historic Wadsworth-Longfellow House. He headed the committee that organized the first convention to discuss independence for Maine from Massachusetts, held in January 1786. He and his wife had ten children, one of whom later gave birth to poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Although he continued to live in Portland, in 1790 he purchased 7800 acres (30 km²) from the Commonwealth in what became the town of Hiram, Maine, settled his son Charles there in 1795, and in 1800 built Wadsworth Hall there for his retirement.

In 1792 Wadsworth was chosen a presidential elector and a member of the Massachusetts Senate, and from 1793-1807 was the first representative in Congress from the region of Massachusetts that later became Maine. In January 1807 he moved to Hiram where he incorporated the township (February 27, 1807) and served as selectman, treasurer and magistrate. For the remainder of his life devoted himself to farming and local concerns. He died in Hiram on July 18, 1829, and is buried in the family cemetery at Wadsworth Hall.

[edit] References

Peleg Wadsworth at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans
Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century
Massachusetts Soldiers & Sailors in the War of the Revolution
Rolde, Neil (1990). Maine: A Narrative History. Gardiner, Me: Harpswell Press, 129. ISBN 0-88448-069-0.

Preceded by Theodore Sedgwick (Redistricted)	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 4th congressional district (Maine district) March 4, 1793 – March 3, 1795 alongside: George Thatcher, Henry Dearborn on a General ticket	Succeeded by Dwight Foster (Redistricted)
Preceded by None-new position	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 13th congressional district (Maine district) 1795 – 1803	Succeeded by Ebenezer Seaver
Preceded by None-new position	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 15th congressional district (Maine district) 1803 – 1807	Succeeded by Daniel Ilsley