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Powell, Esq., and Jedidiah Preble, Esq., "Constitutional Counsellors of this Province residing in the County, take their places at the Board as usual the ensuing session."

On the 5th of October, the House of Representatives of Massachusetts met at Salem, and resolved itself into a Provincial Congress, and on the 8th adjourned to Concord. They took the government of the province into their hands, and made vigorous preparations for the ap proaching contest. On the 27th of October, Gen. Jedidiah Preble, with Gen. Artemas Ward and Col. Pomeroy, were chosen General Officers of the Provincial forces, and Gen. Preble was chosen to the chief command.* This appointment he was forced to decline on account of ill health and advanced age, and it was then bestowed upon Gen. Artemas Ward, who at a later period was superseded by Washington.†

Great hopes had been entertained that when news of the resolute spirit of the colonies reached England, it would produce a more temperate consideration of their grievances than ministers had been disposed to take; but when, instead, they found a determination to force down the arbitrary doctrines at the point of the bayonet, they despaired of reconciliation, and prepared with vigor to resist encroachment. The feelings of the people became exceedingly irritated against those who still countenanced the course of the mother country, and personal quarrels often took place between individuals. A rencontre of this kind, in which Gen. Preble was one of the actors, is related as having taken place in King, or, as it is now called, India street. Gen. Preble met Mr. Sheriff Tyng, and said, "It is talked that there will be a mob to-night." They met Mr. Oxnard (his son-in-law), when Tyng said to him, "We are going to have a mob to-night." The General denied having said so. Tyng contradicted him, and called him an old fool, and threatened he would chastise him if he were not an old man. The General threatened to cane him, or knock him down, if he should repeat those words, when Tyng drew his sword, and threatened to run him through. Preble then collared and shook Tyng. Afterwards Tyng asked pardon of the General, and it was granted. The populace inquired if the General was satisfied, and told

* Afternoon Thursday, October 27, 1774. It was moved that the Congress proceed to the choice of three general officers, and resolved that they would first make choice of the gentleman who should have the chief command, and the Committee having voted and counted the votes reported that the Hon. Jedidiah Preble, Esq., was chosen. Hon. Artemas Ward next chosen. Then Colonel Pomeroy.-Journal of Provincial Congress of Mass.

The Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1775, p. 297, vol. 45, under head of the Proceedings of the American Colonies-says:

"Gen. Gage has given positive orders that no person shall go out of Boston. Colonel Pribble has issued as positive orders that no person shall go into Boston."

Dr. Samuel Deane's Diary, April 8, 1774.

him he should have all the satisfaction he desired, but he desired nothing more. This anecdote illustrates not only the popularity of the General, but the state of feeling towards the Crown officers and the Government itself.

It was somewhere about this time that Gen. Preble abandoned the Episcopal form of worship, and took seats under the droppings of Parson Smith's eloquence, because the Episcopal clergyman had offended him by continuing to pray for the King and royal family. In April, 1775, Gen. Preble with four others was added to the Committee of Inspection at Falmouth, and on the 9th of May became security for Capt. Mowatt, his surgeon, and the Rev. Mr. Wiswell, who had been seized while walking upon Munjoy Hill by a mob of soldiers under the command of Col. Thompson. The commanding officer on board Mowatt's ship threatened to lay the town in ashes if the prisoners were not immediately given up. Gen. P. and Col. Freeman became security for their return the next day on their parole, and they went on board ship about 9 the same evening. When it was ascertained that Mowatt did not intend to keep his parole, the militia mob vented their rage upon the hostages and kept them in confinement without dinner, and refused to let their children speak with them. Towards evening they were released on their consenting to furnish refreshment to the militia. The number of men was 337, and Gen. Preble was compelled as his contribution to furnish them with some barrels of bread, a number of cheeses, and two barrels of rum-the whole at a cost to him of about ten pounds lawful, and all for a cowardly wretch who had not honor enough to keep his parole, and who in a mean spirit of revenge obtained the orders from Admiral Graves, under which he burnt the town, on the 16th of October following. By this outrage Gen. Preble his security incurred a loss of property in the aggregate valued at over £2,500, and Col. Freeman, his other hostage, half as much. On the receipt of Mowatt's badly spelled, worded and written letter, announcing his intention to burn the town in two hours, Gen. Preble was appointed one of a committee to wait upon him, to see if the threatened calamity could not be averted. At the earnest entreaty of the committee, Mowatt consented to postpone the execution of his second orders until 8 o'clock the next morning, on certain conditions, which were evaded until the time set had expired. The destruction did not commence until 9 o'clock. Gen. Preble removed his family and such other property as he was able to save, to Capisick. His loss of property was greater than that of any other sufferer by the burning of Falmouth.* It was not until

*The following estimate of his losses is taken from a memorandum in his own handwriting, viz.:

One dwelling house I lived in, two story high, four rooms on a floor, all well finished, with a porch and a Chinese fence

£550 0 0

1791, when the General Court of Massachusetts granted them two townships of land now known as Freeman and New Portland, that any relief was obtained by the sufferers for their losses. In 1776 & '77,

ABB1777 - Jedidiah Prebe

and again in 1780, he was chosen by the

people as their

Representative to the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, with little if any opposition. On the 19th of May he was elected Representative, by 99 out of 102 votes, as he states in his diary. The town neglected to send the precepts of his and his colleague's election, and on the 30th of May, in answer to a call of the House, Gen. Preble said, "I was loathe to come, but being elected by so great a majority, felt bound to accept." It was then unanimously voted by the House that he should keep his seat. On the 20th of June following, he was elected Councillor (one of the board of eighteen) for the Province of Maine, in place of Mr. Chauncy, resigned, by a joint vote of the House and Board, receiving one hundred out of one hundred and eight votes. In 1778, by advice and consent of the Council, he was appointed, by command of the major part of the Council, under the act of 1699, a Justice of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas, for the County of

Furniture, provisions and clothing left in the house
One barn and chaise house, wood house and other small buildings, together
with a wharf and platform back of the house

134 0 0

70 0 0

One large store improved by Mr. Thos. Oxnard, Rented at 26. 13. 4. per ann.
One hatter's shop, two story high

One dwelling house, four rooms on a floor, two story high, that Samuel Moody kept a Tavern in, with a new kitchen back

400 0 0

200 0 0

45 0 0

One small store joining

30 0 0

One bake house and two stores joining, two story

80 0 0

One shop and eight stores joining, all two story high

390 0 0

One store on the end of my wharf

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40 0 0

Goods, left in the shop, viz.: iron, glass, wooden ware, English goods, sheep's wool, flax, ceprass and logwood, amounting to

200 0 0

24 cwt. good sugar a 40s.

48 0 0

160 gals. molasses a 1s. 6d.; 140 gals. W. Rum at 3s.

33 0 0

100 bushels salt at 2s. 8d.; 6000 seasoned trunnails a 20s.

19 6 8

One eleven inch cable and small rigging, burnt in my store, 13000 seasoned

[blocks in formation]

One body of a chaise, £4; one pr. wheels, iron board and one body of a cart, £5
Damage done to my wharf by the fire

900

30 0 0

To two quarter casks of Madeira a £12. :

To moving my household goods and other effects sundry times out of town Forty sheep a 10s.; one yoke of oxen 13s. 6d., and two cows a £3, lost by taking them off my islands

13 6 8

20 0 0

39 68

24 0 0

Errors excepted, &c.

JEDIDIAH PREBLE.

£2523 4 0

CUMBERLAND, SS. Falmouth, Dec. 1, 1775, the above named Jedidiah Preble, Esq., made oath that the above is a true account of the loss he met with by Capt. Mowatt's lately burning the town of Falmouth, according to his best judgment. Coram.

ENOCH FREEMAN, Justice Peace.

Cumberland, and was the fourth of the name of Preble appointed to a judicial office. On the 4th of September, 1780, under the new State constitution, he was elected the first Senator from Cumberland County, receiving in Falmouth, the town where he resided, 35 out of 42 votes. In 1782 and '83, he held appointments as Judge of Inferior Courts, under the new State constitution, and these appointments were the closing ones of his long career of activity, honor and usefulness. Four days after the rejoicing in Boston, on the occasion of the definitive treaty of peace having been signed by Congress, viz., on the 11th of March, 1784, he breathed his last at his residence in Falmouth, and on the 16th was buried in the old burying place on Munjoy Hill, where the monument erected to his memory can still be seen. It is a tombshaped block of granite masonry, covered with a free-stone slab, on which may be read this Inscription :—

UNDER

THIS STONE

IS DEPOSITED

ALL THAT IS MORTAL

OF

THE HONORABLE

JEDIDIAH PREBLE, ESQUIRE,
WHO DIED MARCH 11, 1784,

AGED 77 YEARS.

HE ACTED ON ALL THE STAGES OF

LIFE,

AS A

TRUSTY COMMANDER AT SEA,
AN INTREPID SOLDIER,

A PRUDENT GENERAL,

A WISE LEGISLATOR,

AND

AN UPRIGHT JUDGE.

Where is thy sting, oh death?
And where thy victory, grave?

Jedidiah Preble is reputed to have been the first white man that ascended to the summit of Mount Washington. He often told his children the story of his long, dangerous and toilsome journey, considering it, as well he might, in absence of roads or bridle paths, one of the most important of his achievements. According to the tradition of the time, he went up the mountain and washed his hands in the clouds." His son Enoch used to tell of his father's journey, as he had told it to him, and among other incidents mentioned his leaving a bottle of brandy on a flat rock on the top of the mountain, and that when the spot was revisited years afterwards, the bottle was broken, and the rock cracked, supposed from a stroke of lightning. The date of this expedition, unfortunately, has not been preserved; but some few years since, old Abel Crawford, the patriarch of the mountain, who had not then been gathered to his fathers, told the wife of one of Brigadier Preble's grandsons, that he was his companion on the occasion referred to, and verified his account of it.

General Preble is represented by his children and contemporaries to have been of commanding and dignified presence, standing full six feet in height. His common dress was the scarlet coat and laced hat, which, previous to the Revolution, were only permitted to be worn by what was called the privileged classes. He was of very quick temper, and resolute and even stubborn in his purposes. His opinion. once formed, there was no moving him from it, so that it is usual to say among his descendants, when one of them is fixed of will about anything and resolute to do what he has planned, that he has a touch of the Brigadier in him.

His will, dated Februaay 10, 1784 (recorded vol. iii. Probate Records C. C., p. 292), bequeaths his property, viz.: 1st, To the payment of his just debts and funeral expenses; 2d, Bangs Island to his wife during her life; 3d, £100 lawful money to be paid one year after his decease to each of the following persons, viz.: Sons John, Ebenezer, Edward, Joshua, Enoch and Henry, also to daughter Statira. The remainder of his estate was to be equally divided among his children, and the heirs of his deceased son Jedidiah, in tenths. Further, after his widow's decease, Bangs Island was to be in the same way divided. The will made his son Ebenezer and his widow Mehitable his executors.

*

MRS. MEHITABLE PREBLE.

General Preble's second wife was the daughter of

mehetable Preble Captain Joshua Hangs, who

came to Falmouth from Harwich, Cape Cod. Her first husband, John Roberts, Jr., died in the first year of their wedded life, leaving her a childless widow. About a year after his death she married General (then Colonel) Preble, on the 9th of May, 1754. Mrs. Preble is represented to have been a bustling, energetic, business. woman, fully alive and attentive to the interest and business of her husband, and improving his property while he was fulfilling his various

Signature to Will.

1 + Capt. Joshua Bangs, the father of Mehitable Preble, came to Falmouth from Harwich, Cape Cod, about 1731, when he had laid out to him "as assign to Dennis Morrough late of Falmouth, deceased, a tract of land and flats containing half an acre, and bound as followeth beginning on the corner between the house lot formerly laid out to John Prichard on old Casco's Neck, near where Fort Loyal stood and the flats laid out to Edward and John Tyng, thence bounding on said Prichard's lot to run NEtly to the Etly corner thereof, and so including the Pine tree and parcel of land and rocks which lyeth between King Street and a small lot laid out to John Graves and the flats laid out and granted to Joseph Bayley, bounded on Joseph Bayley's flats and the aforesaid Tyng's flats on the other side, until half an acre be made up and completed. It being for the house lot for said Morrough's right, provided the same be free from former grants." Rated at Falmouth October 22d, 1731. (See old Falmouth Proprietors' Records, p. 258, vol. 1.) This land was on the westerly

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