Most American history students learn that King William’s War began in New England as an extension of the war between England and France, when in July 1689 the French governor of Canada incited the Indians to brutally attack Dover, N.H., then known as Cochecho. By then, according to the letters of Edmund Andros, governor of New England, Maine had already been deeply embroiled in the conflict for a year. 

Andros was appointed governor by the Catholic King James II of England in 1686. To test the boundaries of his jurisdiction, Andros raided the home and fort of the French Baron de Saint Castin in March of 1688, absconding with his furniture and family’s personal effects. Castin had lived among the Penobscot Indians for 20 years and had married the daughters of chief Madockawando, the most powerful of the eastern sachems, or tribal leaders. The baron and his family were forewarned of the attack and had taken to the Penobscot woods, but the insult ruptured the tenuous peace that had existed between the Maine Native Americans and the colonists since the end of King Philip’s War. There is evidence that Castin did arm his Indian brothers, but at first their violence was mostly directed at livestock.  

Tensions built during the summer of 1688. A handful of North Yarmouth Indians, who had reportedly been drinking, threatened to shoot one of Henry Lanes’ hogs. The Abenaki tribe at Saco was meanwhile being deprived of many sources of food. A 1678 treaty with the English stipulated that the tribe be paid so many bushels of corn each year in exchange for territory. The colonists had ignored the debt. They were also stretching their fishing nets across the Saco River, thereby preventing the migration of fish to the Indian fishing grounds.  

In August of 1688, Saco Indian families complained several times that the colonist’s cows were eating their crops; about the only source of food they had left. Their complaints were ignored. When the cows got into their corn again, the Native Americans shot at the cows, wounding some. Saco Justice of the Peace, Benjamin Blackman, felt justified in taking drastic action against the Indians, especially in light of the hog incident at North Yarmouth.

He rounded up 16 to 20 members of the Saco tribe who had participated in attacks against the colonists during King Philip’s War and sent them to Boston. Two weeks later, New Dartmouth and North Yarmouth were attacked in earnest by avenging Indians. They let it be known, in no uncertain terms, that their actions were in retribution for the imprisonment of their brothers from Saco. Andros released the prisoners but it was too little too late. Several members of the Barrett family were killed and others kidnapped by members of the Saco tribe at Cape Porpoise on Oct. 11, 1688.

Andros, who was generally despised by his mostly Protestant constituents in New England, organized an army to overtake the enemy in Maine. When none of his regular officers were willing to go, Andros decided, with disastrous results, to lead the men himself. An army of 500 men was easily detected and the enemy disappeared into its native forest. The only casualties of the expedition were English soldiers who froze to death or died of disease in the cold Maine winter.

While Andros was in Maine, his boss King James II abdicated the English throne. William of Orange succeeded him in February of 1689, but word of his coronation didn’t reach the colonies until the end of March. It was good news for the colonists, who hoped their old charter would be restored under the new Protestant king. Andros had by then returned to Boston, leaving his soldiers stationed in makeshift forts along the Maine coast. His commanding officers wrote to him repeatedly requesting ammunition and supplies but the Catholic governor ignored their requests. He was focused on protecting his own political future.

A rumor began to spread among the soldiers in Maine that Andros had sold them out and was negotiating with the Indian sachems to make Maine a Catholic territory. On March 28, 1689, Andros received notice that 17 soldiers at Saco Falls had deserted their majesty’s service. Mention was also made of mutinous actions by soldiers from Cochecho and other garrisons.

On April 12, 1689, Andros ordered Capt. John Floyd, commander of the Saco fort, to go after his AWOL soldiers and arrest those unwilling to return. He also ordered Floyd to relieve Lt. John Puddington of his command at the Cape Porpoise fort and send him to Boston to account for releasing his soldiers against the governor’s orders. The soldiers from Saco and Cape Porpoise were long gone, already marching to Boston to participate in a movement to depose Androsm when Floyd received his orders.

On April 18, 1689, Andros was imprisoned by his subjects in Boston in spite of his efforts to escape by dressing in women’s clothing. After the soldiers had vacated the forts at Saco and Cape Porpoise, both defenseless villages were attacked by “Indians well known to them.” Two houses were burned at Saco and several inhabitants were wounded. John Barrett of Cape Porpoise was killed as his father and brothers had been the previous autumn. The “unprovoked” Cochecho massacre, often referred to as the beginning of King William’s War, was still three months away.                                 Sources

 

Less than 100 families lived in Wells when blacksmith, Louis Allain arrived from France around 1684.  The colonists probably received him with some trepidation, given the alliance between his countrymen in Canada and the Indians that had plagued them, off and on, for a decade.  Little did they know that Allain would one day use their acquaintance to spy for the Governor of l’Acadie.

French Protestants or Huguenots fled religious persecution in France during the reign of King Louis XIV, many of them settling in New England.  Louis Allain’s indentured apprentice, Anthony Coombs, was a Huguenot.  Louis, himself may also have represented himself as such to the people of Wells.  He would later prove his loyalty lay in his pocketbook. 

At thirty years old, Allain was already a man of means.  He purchased ½ of Samuel Storer’s Cape Neddick-built brigantine, Endeavor, in August of 1685.  A month later, he purchased a mill on the western bank of the Little River, lots on both sides of the river and the home of William Frost. 

Territorial tensions grew between the colonists from France and England and between the Indian tribes allied to both monarchies.  Allain decided to move to Port Royal, Nova Scotia, leaving Anthony Coombs behind to protect his Wells property.  In 1687 he obtained permission to build windmills along the river that has since been known as Allain’s River.  He raised a family there and his fortunes grew. 

Within a few years Louis owned a grain mill, a saw mill, a store and several coasting vessels that made regular trading voyages to the English city of Boston.  He and his partner shipped lumber and flour from their mills in Port Royal and brought back Boston goods to sell to their Acadian customers.  Andre Faneuil, the wealthy Boston Huguenot whose fortune financed the building of  Faneuil Hall, traded regularly with the Acadians, even as Governor William Phipps burned Port Royal in 1690.  When the legality of their trading arrangement was questioned, Allain and other Acadian businessmen declared their allegiance to the English King.  At the same time they were supplying the French Navy with mast timbers.   

Indians attacked the villages along the York County coast in 1703.   It was a horrible year for Wells.  Thirty-nine of her inhabitants were either killed or made prisoner.  The following Spring Colonel Benjamin Church led an expedition through Penobscot, Passamaquoddy and the Bay of Fundy, collecting French prisoners and Indian scalps for bounty along the way.  Under orders from Massachusetts Governor Dudley, he left Port Royal unscathed.  Some people of Massachusetts, including Puritan minister Cotton Mather, suspected that Dudley was trying to preserve illegal trade between Boston and Nova Scotia. 

Feeding prisoners of war became expensive for both the French and the English and an agreement was made to exchange prisoners in 1705.  Allain and his business partner, who were fluent in English and familiar with Boston, were sent to seal the deal.  According to the September 10, 1705 issue of the “Boston News-letter”, Allain arrived in Boston on the 20^th of August under a flag of truce, with the signed agreement.  He returned to Port Royal at the end of September carrying a few French prisoners back as a show of good faith.  A January 1706 report in the same paper indicates that he sailed again for Massachusetts a few months later.  “On Thursday last the 26^th day of December there arrived at Nanguncket [Ogunquit] near to Wells in the Province of Maine, A Flag of Truce from Port-Royal with 34 English Prisoners. 

E.E. Bourne writes in his “History of Wells” that Lewis Allen came to Wells under the Flag of Truce and was authorized to trade prisoners.  The people of Wells were immediately suspicious of the Frenchman’s motives and searched his pocketbook.  In it, they found incriminating instructions for Allain to report to the French Governor of Acadia any efforts underway to fortify Wells against the Indians.  “If any enterprise was afoot that he should join L.A. the two first letters of his name, close together.  If it was only in agitation, place them at some distance; but if nothing was in motion, then to sign a cross.” 

Allain was clasped in irons and sent to Boston to be dealt with.  In a surprising twist that Bourne does not reveal, Governor Dudley released Allain.  He made some excuse about owing Louis his life and sent him back to Port Royal to continue his lucrative lumber and flour trade.   

Anthony Coombs, whose indenture expired, had long since deserted Allain’s Wells mill on the Little River.  Louis hired his “trusty and well-beloved friend Lewis Bane of York,” [who had represented the English in treaty negotiations at Port Royal] to recover his title to the Wells property.  Bane eventually bought the property from him in 1720 and Louis boldly appeared at the courthouse in Biddeford to acknowledge the instrument May 9, 1733.  When he died in Port Royal several years later Louis Allain was one of the richest men in town.

The people of Arundel were for the most part in support of American independence from Great Britain. King George III had levied taxes that threatened Arundel’s maritime trade economy. When 400 buildings at today’s Portland were burned by Captain Henry Mowat on October 18, 1775, the threat of war was too close to home to be ignored.

More than a month before the declaration of independence was signed Arundel citizens voted to “engage their lives and fortunes” to support independence. And that they did. Arundel boys were lost at Quebec, Halifax, Valley Forge and Lake Champlain as well as in the disastrous Penobscot Expedition of 1779.

Coastal Cape Porpoise residents, who were engaged in seafaring trade with merchants from Essex County Massachusetts, were particularly vulnerable. In October of 1780 three vessels were captured just outside Cape Porpoise Harbor and their captive crews were carried to Penobscot. The following year three more vessels met the same fate just outside the harbor though a few crewman made it to shore.

A bold attack inside Cape Porpoise Harbor was described in a New-England Chronicle article on October 3, 1782. On the morning of August 8, 1782 sheep and cattle were grazing on the islands as usual and two Newbury Massachusetts vessels were safely anchored in the harbor. One was a large sloop loaded with lumber and fitted out with a canon to protect her cargo. The other was a wood schooner that sailed with her.

An enemy brig of 16 guns suddenly appeared outside the harbor. She sent in a boat with 3 dozen men to capture the armed sloop but the men were surprised by the sloop’s American canon and landed the boat on Goat Island instead. The brig then sailed into the harbor and fired upon the Newbury sloop while an enemy top-sail schooner fired at her from just outside the harbor. The sloop’s crew was forced to evacuate and the enemy took possession of the two American vessels, sending the schooner off to Penobscot. The sloop was driven ashore by a sudden breeze as she left the harbor and was burned by the enemy where she lay at the southwesterly point of Goat Island.

James Burnham Jr., Captain of the Arundel militia, called his men to Trotts Island. From there he successfully advanced on the enemy, still at Goat Island, by ordering his men to wade across the channel under a hail of fire from the top-sail schooner. Wind and tide conspired to keep the Brig from escaping the harbor but she managed to get out just before nightfall by towing and warping her way. The Arundel Militia exchanged fire with the enemy for five or six hours and suffered the loss of one life, that of Captain James Burnham who at the close of the engagement took a musket ball to the chest. According to a witness whom the enemy had taken some time before, and who was on board the schooner during the battle, over 25 of the enemy were killed.

When Charles Bradbury wrote about the battle of Cape Porpoise in 1837, he relied heavily on the memories of his older neighbors to piece together the harrowing events of August 8, 1782. Some of his details varied from the contemporary account and he added a personal story. “Samuel Wildes, who was partially deranged” wrote Bradbury “paddled into the harbor in a small canoe and ordered them to give the vessels up and leave the port.” When he refused to board the brig he was fired upon seven times causing him an injury that lamed him for the rest of his life.

Regardless of his mental health, Samuel Wildes, Sr. had a right to be incensed by the enemy. He knew that his 16 year old son, a privateer crewman, had been imprisoned in England for 15 months. What he didn’t know was that Samuel Wildes, Jr. was at that moment two days out of Marblehead, Massachusetts. Benjamin Franklin had negotiated the release of all American prisoners and they were on their way home.

Most of the British forces had already left Penobscot by August 1782 but the loyalists stationed there were infamous for raiding coastal Maine harbor towns for sheep, cattle and coasting vessels laden with badly needed supplies. Most notable was Loyalist, Richard Pomroy and his 16 gun Brig Meriam.

A few weeks after the attack at Cape Porpoise, the Meriam was cut out of her anchor at Penobscot by Captain George Little in his American Navy sloop Winthrop. The Brig Meriam was triumphantly sailed into Boston Harbor on Sept 16, 1782 along with 3 other prizes. Among them were, privateer schooner Hammond commanded by a Penobscot Loyalist named Doty and an unnamed Newbury wood schooner that was a recent prize of the Brig Meriam.

A letter from the Governor, published in the Massachusetts Archives, relates to the success of Little’s six week cruise. It says “I considered that he had most essentially prevented the depredations on that coast by capturing & sending into this Port near the whole of the armed force they possessed at Penobscot.”

Definitive proof that Cape Porpoise was attacked by loyalist brig Meriam and schooner Hammond, has not been found but if the Governor was correct in his assessment of the remaining Penobscot forces the circumstantial evidence is strong.

For sources see www.mykennebunks.com/revolution.htm

Wells minister, Rev. George Burroughs was hanged as a witch during the Salem delirium of 1692. A century later, Widow Elizabeth Smith of Arundel was accused of witchcraft at the York County Court of Common Pleas and Sessions in Biddeford.

Rev. Burroughs was probably a hothead and a show off who liked to impress his neighbors with feats of amazing strength. According to testimony at his trial he could lift a molasses barrel with one finger.

George might not have been a perfect husband, either. When his second wife died her funeral expenses went unpaid. As the preacher at Danvers, Massachusetts he was embroiled in a turf war within the Salem religious hierarchy and could not get them to pay his salary. John Putnam, the keeper of the coin at the Danvers church, also allowed him to buy two gallons of rum on account. Burroughs skipped town with a new wife, leaving word that his salary would easily cover the bills he had with Putnam. A debt charge was filed against him in Salem.

Burroughs preached in Portland, Maine until the Indians drove his family south to Wells during King Williams War. They were living in Wells on April 30, 1692, when John Putnam’s 12 year old niece, Ann and George’s former maid, Mercy Lewis, accused the minister of witchcraft. The girls testified that he had appeared to them in a vision and admitted to killing his first two wives. Three constables were sent to Wells to deliver the accused to Salem. Burroughs was confident that the preposterous charges would be dropped once he appeared before Judge Jonathan Corwin who owned considerable acreage and mill rights along the Mousam River. Emerson W. Baker, of Salem State College, proposes a connection between Maine land dealings by the likes of Judge Corwin and the escalation of the Salem witch mania, in his article “Maine, Indian Land Speculation, and the Essex County Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692”

Burroughs offered to show the authorities the shortest route back to Salem through the woods to South Berwick. The constables were apparently compelled by some magic spell to follow his advice. Along the way a lightning storm spooked their horses and caused them to rush through the trees at a high-speed trot. The path they traveled- thenceforth known as Witchtrot Road- eventually led them out of the woods and on to Salem, but the constables were convinced that the minister had caused the storm with witchcraft. They testified to that effect at his trial. Judge Corwin and his brother in-law, Judge Hawthorne found Rev. George Burroughs guilty of witchcraft and he was hanged August 19, 1692.

One hundred and four years later witchcraft hysteria visited the good people of Arundel. John Hilton was walking home one evening when Widow Smith appeared on the road six yards ahead of him. The ox goad he was carrying started slipping through his hand by some power that he decided must be witchcraft. He caught up to the old woman and tried to strike her with the stick. Instead of injuring her he somehow received a violent blow to his own lower back.

John was in a state of insanity when he got home. His father in-law, Eaton Cleaves confined the young man and asked Widow Smith to visit him. While she was in his presence John spoke rationally but as soon as she was gone he was again insensible. The widow, in an effort to make peace, shed her own blood as an antidote to the bewitching but John’s condition did not improve.

Things got really ugly when the women of the family got involved. John’s sister Elizabeth Smith, his wife Sarah and nieces Dolly Smith and Molly Hilton tried to do away with the widow by concocting an incantation of their own involving home grown herbs and some of John’s bodily fluids. When that didn’t kill the old woman they told her “she ought to have been long ago in hell with the damned; that they would let loose the man whom she had bewitched to kill her.”

John Hilton did escape confinement. He violently beat Widow Smith with a stick and almost choked her to death. Nearby, his niece egged him on. “Kill her, Uncle John,” she cried. The witchcraft delusion spread throughout their Cleaves Cove neighborhood causing one house to be entirely demolished.

With this bizarre case before him at the Biddeford court, Justice Wells refused to hear any arguments about magic spells. According to a November 17, 1796 article published in “The Eastern Herald and Gazette of Maine,” he told John Hilton’s family that the difficulties and the dissention in their neighborhood arose from their ignorance, not the poor old woman’s witchcraft. The accusers were convicted of assault and battery. Each was required to pay $100 bond that would be returned to them if they kept peace with the Widow Smith until the following August.

What a difference a century makes. In Salem, it had been the Judges and the religious leaders who fueled the fires of hysteria. The wise Biddeford Judge put a quick end to the Arundel witch hunt by making it clear that accusing someone of witchcraft would be expensive.

Antinomian minister John Wheelwright is credited for founding the town of Wells, and his grant from Sir Ferdinando Gorges did designate the land from the Ogunquit River to the Kennebunk River for his beleaguered Exeter, N.H., congregation, but life in the wilderness did not suit this refined philosopher.

He began orchestrating his departure almost immediately upon arriving in Maine. Colonial men were susceptible to the complexities of human nature as are modern men. The revelation of those complexities is intended not to dishonor their accomplishments but to convey relatability.

An article by Sargent Bush, Jr. published in the The New England Quarterly in 1991 describes Rev. Wheelwright as “opinionated, contentious, stubborn and occasionally (by his own admission) intemperate,” but none of his biographers dispute the minister’s fidelity to his principals.

Born in Lincolnshire, England, around 1592 he went to college with Oliver Cromwell. Cotton Mather quoted Cromwell as saying “I remember the time when I was more afraid of meeting Wheelwright at football, than I have been since of meeting an army in the field, for I was infallibly sure of being tripped up by him.” Wheelwright succeeded his first father-in-law to the Vicarage of Bilsby, Lincolnshire. His position there ended in 1632 when it was discovered that he had tried to sell his pastorate for personal gain but his superiors were relieved for the excuse to replace him. Ever a free and vocal spirit, Wheelwright espoused unconventional views that eventually caused him to be ecclesiastically silenced in England.

He departed for Massachusetts in the spring of 1636, with his second wife, Mary, his mother in-law, Susanna Hutchinson, his five children and members of his extended family. By October he had assumed a Pastorate at Wollaston Hill. Wheelwright and his famous sister in-law, Anne Hutchinson, who had preceded him to New England by two years, were soon embroiled in controversy. They believed that good behavior and adherence to rules imposed by religious leaders had no connection to receiving God’s grace. The Puritans called these beliefs Antinomianism and banished Wheelwright from Massachusetts in November of 1637 for encouraging dissension with his Fast Day sermon.

Thirty-five sympathizers followed the charismatic preacher to New Hampshire where they established the Town of Exeter in April 1638. Before long, Massachusetts began expanding their authority northward and in 1641 Wheelwright, still banished from Massachusetts, could see the writing on the wall. He sent some of his followers to prospect for new territory in which to institute a church outside the jurisdiction of Massachusetts.

A license to settle between the Ogunquit River and the Kennebunk River was obtained from Thomas Gorges, as agent for his uncle Ferdinando. Gorges was reluctant to issue an outright grant to the territory. A previous instrument to a man named Stratton overlapped but plans for the new community proceeded and Wheelwright followers, Edmund Littlefield, Edward Rishworth and others, went ahead to start improving the sparsely populated land that would become the town of Wells.

The Reverend purchased 400 acres on the eastern shore of the Ogunquit River from Gorges in April of 1643. In July, the Stratton grant being cleared, Wheelwright and his representatives were given rights to allot Gorges’s land at 5 shillings for every 100 acres. Very few of these lots were ever assigned. Rev. Wheelwright was already preoccupied.

He had received a letter in May from Massachusetts granting him permission to visit the Bay Colony for 14 days. The banished Antinomian minister was counseled by his old colleagues there that if he humbly approached the legislature he would likely be forgiven and allowed to return to Massachusetts. A few days after his return to Wells, Wheelwright composed an effusive letter of apology to the Massachusetts legislature, for his admitted transgressions but the pardon was delayed by Wheelwright’s reluctance to appear in person and admit guilt. Writing letters was one thing but verbally denouncing what was in his heart, before his peers was quite another.

The banishment was lifted in May of 1644, without the necessity of a verbal admission of guilt. At about the same time a scathing review of Antinomianism in New England, allegedly written by John Winthrop was published. Humiliated, the minister remained in Wells to pen a reply that was published in London the following year. Wheelwright finally returned to Massachusetts’s jurisdiction in 1647 by accepting a position of Assistant Minister in Hampton, N.H.

Many of his followers left Wells when he did but the town thrived thanks in part to descendants of the irrepressible Rev. John Wheelwright.

The first European settlement in southern Maine was at Biddeford Pool. Dr. Richard Vines and his company wintered there among the Indians, years before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock. His boss, Sir Fernando Gorges, had been swept away by the promise of riches in the “New World,” and he financed the colony to prove that the climate in the northern part of America was hospitable enough to sustain Englishmen.

Samuel de Champlain visited a bustling Indian village at the mouth of the Saco River in 1605. The Indians, who were cultivating corn, beans, squash, pumpkins and tobacco, welcomed the French explorer into their homes.

“These people shave the hair on the top of their heads rather high up and wear the rest very long, combing and twisting it in the back in various ways, very neatly with feathers, that they fasten to the head. They paint their faces black and red, like other savages that I have seen,” he wrote in his “Voyages of Samuel de Champlain,” published in 1613. “The savages stay in this place all the time, and have a big cabin surrounded by palisades made of rather large trees placed side by side, whither they retire when their enemies come to war against them; and they cover their cabins with oak bark.”

Highly respected historians disagree as to the date of Richard Vines’s arrival at Biddeford Pool. Like a 400-year-old game of telephone, they have cited one another’s work, each adding scholarly interpretation, which has since come to be accepted as fact, concluding that Vines stayed at Biddeford Pool for one winter and that his settlement was not continuously sustained. The record contemporary to Vines’ early settlement at Biddeford Pool and the source that much historical analysis of it can be traced to is Fernando Gorges’ account, published as A description of New England, which provides only clues to the date and circumstances.

The Indian village near Biddeford Pool had been hit hard by war and disease when Richard Vines arrived some time between 1616 and 1618. Unable to find investors for colonization, after the Popham Colony failed in 1608, Gorges acquired a boat of his own. “I got a Master and company for her, to which I sent Vines and others, my owne servants with their provision for trade and discovery, appointing them to leave the Ship and Ships Company for to follow their busnesse in the usuall place.”

Fernando had to pay his men “extream rates” to persuade them to stay the winter in what would, as a result, become known as Winter Harbor.

Vines, a trained physician, treated the Indians with kindness and respect. Many of them were suffering from a highly contagious disease, the pathogens of which are unknown. In spite of close co-habitation with the afflicted, the Englishmen never got sick. Experts speculate that during first contact, Indians were exposed to European diseases to which they had no immunities. The epidemic decimated their population from the Kennebec River to Massachusetts. In 1620, the Plymouth Pilgrims considered the plague on the Indians divine intervention on their behalf and proof of their righteousness.

Gorges continued, “this course I held some years together, but nothing to my private profit, for what I got one way I spent another, so that I began to grow weary of that businesse as not for my turne till better times.” He did not write of Vines’ return to England or of his reassignment elsewhere.

In an address prepared for the Popham Memorial, and published in 1862 by the Maine Historical Society, E. E. Bourne, author of “History of Wells and Kennebunk,” suggests that Richard Vines may have remained in Winter Harbor thus preceding Plymouth Colony as the first permanent settlement in New England.

“Nothing appears in the history of their stay at Winter Harbor, which would render it probable that they left in the ensuing season. The grant to Vines a few years afterwards, in this immediate locality, must have been induced by some more beneficial services on behalf of the Lord Proprietor, and asked for by Vines from some further knowledge of its prospective value, than are exhibited in the concise account, which we have of their sojourn there during one winter.”

Vines was given a patent at Winter Harbor, now known as Biddeford Pool, in 1630 and remained there until 1645 when territorial strife induced him to relocate to Barbados. Vines, an Episcopalian, enjoyed a mutually respectful relationship with the natives of Maine.

The town of Wells was settled by the Antinomian Minister John Wheelwright and his followers in 1641. Rev. Wheelwright’s son and grandson, Samuel and John respectively, owned two of the garrisons in Wells in April of 1689 when Indians attacked Saco and Cape Porpus during what is referred to as King William’s War.

After the devastating Indian attacks of King Philip’s War, Wells had taken precautions and fortified several garrisons, two of which were owned by the Wheelwright family. Wells was considered the colonial stronghold of Maine in 1689. Inhabitants of the besieged towns to the east of Wells took refuge at the garrisons there. Samuel and John Wheelwright were among those who wrote to Boston for military assistance in a letter dated April 25, 1689.

King James II of England, who had declared the old charter of the Massachusetts illegal, had fled England and William, Prince of Orange, and his wife, Mary, were invited to ascend the throne. Colonists hoped that the new leadership would honor their old charter thereby restoring a degree of self-rule to New England.

When the soldiers stationed at Saco and Cape Porpoise got word of the abdication they left their posts and marched to Boston to participate in the overthrow of Governor Edmund Andros on April 18, 1689. This left the towns vulnerable to Indian attacks.

The government in Boston was in chaos. The frantic settlers at Wells did not know who was in charge but desperately wanted to summon assistance for their neighbors in Cape Porpoise.

An original letter, addressed to the unknown “superior powers now in being at Boston” is preserved by the Massachusetts Historical Society. It reads:

“WELLS ; 25th Aprill 1689 — May it plese your Hon. wee haue receiued certain information that ye 2_th of this Instant being Lords day, the Indians; suposed to be eight or ten ; sundry of them well known to y inhabitance of Saco came upon said town, surprising y people, in their houses: wounded to y number of fiue or six, burnt two houses, with all the goods y owners with great difficulty escapeing: y next day they came to Cape-Porpus burnt a house begun to be Garrisoned, belonging to Nicho Moorey slew one young man: uiz: John Barrett (whose father and two Brothers, were killed by sum Indians as is supposed, ye last fall) took y slain mans horse and another out of a pasture and rode about triumphantly in uiew of y desolate Inhabitance: who for their safty) were forced to forsake y Terra firma or main. and to betake themselues to an Island: where is a Garrison, where they remained in a deplorable case, and are subject to staruing, or murder, or both if speedy succor be not afforded. their cattle, it is to be feared, are mostly killed y Indians shooting uery often in y woods. y certainty, of y premises we reciue from two men, who went on purpose for information : of which we thought meet to giue your Hon an account so leauing your Hon to y Protection of heauen, and y sad case of y distressed to your most serious compastionate thoughts. wee subscribe — Your Hon. most humble seruants”.

In spite of best efforts in Wells, help from Boston was not forthcoming. The settlers at Cape Porpoise were trapped behind the Little Stage Island fort for days. The Indians had stationed themselves at the narrow strip of land that, at low water, connects Stage Island to Little Stage Island and the inhabitants were facing certain capture or death. Nicholas Morey, formerly of Wells, whose home at Cape Porpoise had been burned in the attack, took it upon himself to row to Portsmouth for help in the dead of night, with a broken leg, in a broken boat. Charles Bradbury described the incident in his History of Kennebunkport. “there was but little chance of his reaching Portsmouth in safety; but with this forlorn hope, they continued to defend themselves the next day without provisions, till their last charge of ammunition was in their guns.” Miraculously, Morey arrived safely in Portsmouth and returned with an armed sloop to rescue his grateful neighbors. To read more about this incident and King William’s War, visit www.mykennebunks.com and click on the Stage Island Fort page. Many thanks to Kennebunkport Artist Frank Handlen for his original drawing.

A single generation of men witnessed the mouth of the Ogunquit River move a mile eastward and then back down the coast again between 1770 and 1822.

Wells residents Jeremiah Hubbard and Rev. Jonathan Greenleaf prepared An Account of Wells in 1825 for the Collections of the Maine Historical Society Volume I. In it they described the changes that took place:

“In the southerly part of the town, the Ogunquit River forms another harbor which can be entered by small vessels only; the depth of water there being but about eight feet. There is one remarkable fact respecting this river. Within the memory of men now living, its outlet into the sea has shifted nearly a mile. It formerly ran out about where it now does; but in a great storm the outlet became somewhat obstructed, and the main river broke through the beach nearly a mile to the eastward. The river having thus found vent, its former channel was wholly filled. However, the river gradually wore away the beach, and with it a small island which lay very near to it, and in a few years regained its former channel, where it has ever since remained.”

Nearly a hundred years after An Account of Wells was prepared, Daisy E. Hilton of Brookline, Mass., was sued by her neighbor for cutting down some trees on the island that had formed when the river wandered. The litigation was described in an article in the Boston Daily Globe June 23, 1923:

“Deeds signed in 1723, in the seventh year of King George’s reign, and a note from John Lothrop, town clerk of Boston signed July 23, 1785, were introduced in the Supreme Judicial Court today in an action involving the ownership of an island in Wells, formed when the Ogunquit River changed its course. There was no island when the deeds were made. The writing on both documents was perfectly legible. The deeds make the river one of the boundaries of the land in question. Two Wells residents, descendants of the original owners, declare that the river outside the island was meant and bring an equity action, charging trespass against Daisy E. Hilton of Brighton, Mass., and four Wells residents for the alleged cutting down of trees and other damage on the island. They ask $500. The defendants allege they have deeds to the island and that the 18th century parchments are intended to mean the river inside the island.”

Early maps typically depict the Maine Coast with pretty broad strokes. One unique 1729 chart of the coast of Maine called “New England coasting pilot from Sandy Point of New York, unto Cape Canso” by Captain Cyprian Southack, Map 1, labels the Ogunquit River the “Moseum River”. Southack described Wells Bay as “a Bar place & very dangerous Bay for Rocks all round, Trade is Lumber for small Vesells & c. Woodland.”

Though he probably confused the Mousam and Ogunquit Rivers and seems to have skipped one river altogether, his advice was welcomed by mariners at a time when there were no charts or maps available. Cartographers repeatedly renamed the Ogunquit River over the years; Negunket, Negunquit, Ogunket, Ogunkell to cite just a few. Many mid-19th century maps call it the Megankill River. The first accurate survey and nautical charting of the American coastline was done for the British in the 1770s and published in the Atlantic Neptune, by Joseph Des Barres. Map 2 is a section of the Des Barres “Coast of New England from Cape Elizabeth, Me. to Newburyport, Mass” chart that was first published in 1776 just in time to be useful the Royal Navy in the Revolutionary War.

Map 3 is a section of a chart drawn by Samuel Lambert of Salem in 1822. These two charts illustrate how the location of the mouth of the Ogunquit River moved about a mile in less than 50 years. In 1776 there was a cove west of the mouth but by 1822 that western cove was gone, as it is today.

The convoluted terminus of the Mousam River depicted on the 1776 map clearly illustrates why 18th century Wells shipbuilders attempted to change the course of that river. They first dug a canal ¾ of a mile long that flowed to the east of Great Hill in 1793. In 1846 another canal was extended west of Great Hill and a dam was built forming a cove for small boats. Many Maine rivers have been manually altered to facilitate the passage and protection of vessels but the Oqunquit River may be the only river to have moved itself.