William Pepperrell - Biography

Biography

William Pepperrell was a native of Kittery, Maine, then a part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and lived there all his life. Born to William Pepperrell, an English settler of Welsh descent who began his career as a fisherman's apprentice, and Margery Bray, daughter of a well-to-do Kittery merchant, William Pepperrell studied surveying and navigation before joining his father (a shipbuilder and fishing boat owner) in business. Young William Pepperrell expanded their enterprise to become one of the most properous mercantile houses in New England with ships carrying lumber, fish and other products to the West Indies and Europe. The Pepperrells sunk their profits into land, and soon they controlled immense tracts. Pepperrell also joined the militia, becoming a captain (1717), major, lieutenant-colonel, and in 1726 colonel of militia. Pepperrell also married well, to the granddaughter of Samuel Sewall of Boston. In short, the rise of the Pepperrells within two generations was meteoric.

Pepperrell served in the Massachusetts General Court (1726–1727), as its provincial legislature was known, and in the Governor's Council (1727–1759), over which he presided for eighteen years as president. Although not a trained lawyer, he was chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas from 1730 until his death. In 1734 Pepperrell joined Kittery's First Congregational Church and remained active in the church's business affairs.

During the War of the Austrian Succession, known in America as King George's War (1744–1748), the third part of the French and Indian Wars), he was one of several people who proposed an expedition against the French Fortress of Louisbourg on Île-Royale (present-day Cape Breton Island). He gathered volunteers, financed and trained the land forces in that campaign. When they sailed in April 1745, he was commander-in-chief of the expedition, supported by a British naval squadron under Captain Peter Warren, appointed Commodore on a temporary basis at the time. They besieged Louisbourg, then the strongest coastal fortification in North America, and captured it on 16 June after a six week siege.

He was made a baronet for his exploits in 1746, the first American so honoured, and given a colonel's commission in the British Army to raise his own regiment. The first incarnation of his regiment did not last long; it was disbanded after Louisbourg was returned to the French pursuant to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748).

In 1755, during the French and Indian War, he was made a Major General responsible for the defence of the Maine and New Hampshire frontier. Throughout that war he was instrumental in raising and training troops for the Massachusetts colony. Two regiments were raised locally with funds supplied by the British Crown, entering the army list as the 50th (Shirley's) and 51st (Pepperrell's) Regiments of Foot. Both regiments took part in the disastrous British campaign of 1755/56. Overwintering near Lake Ontario, the force occupied three forts, Oswego, Ontario and George, collectively known as Fort Pepperrell. Surrounded and besieged by a French force under Montcalm, both regiments surrendered after the local commander was killed. A fair number of the prisoners were massacred by the Indian allies of the French before they reached Montreal. Both regiments were subsequently removed from the army list.

Between March and August 1757, he was acting governor of Massachusetts. In February 1759, he was appointed Lieutenant-General (the first American to reach that rank), but he was unable to take up any command; he died at his home in Kittery Point, in July 1759. The son of a fisherman's apprentice from the West Country of England had garnered a title, and had been received by the King when visiting London in 1749, when Pepperrell was presented with a service of silver plate by the City of London.

But Pepperrell left no son to carry on the name. So he had adopted his grandson William Pepperrell Sparhawk, son of Colonel Nathaniel Sparhawk, as his heir on the condition that Sparhawk agree to go by the name of Pepperrell, which he did by act of legislature. Sparhawk graduated from Harvard College in 1766, became a merchant and inherited the bulk of his grandfather's business enterprises. He was chosen a member of the Governor's Council. In 1774 the baronetcy was revived in his favour. But on the eve of the American Revolution, this grandson of the storied hero of the Battle of Louisburg fled to England as a Loyalist. He continued to reside in London, where he founded the British and Foreign Bible Society. He died at his residence at Portman Square in London in 1816.