1. Sir William Pepperrell, 1st Baronet was an American merchant and soldier in colonial Massachusetts.
17 Facts About William Pepperrell
1. 2.
William Pepperrell is widely remembered for organizing, financing, and leading the 1745 expedition that captured the French fortress of Louisbourg during King George's War.
3.
William Pepperrell owned a number of enslaved people and was considered one of the richest people in America.
4.
William Pepperrell was born in Kittery, Maine, then a part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and lived there all his life.
5.
William Pepperrell was the son of William Pepperrell, a Massachusetts settler of Welsh descent, and Margery Bray, the daughter of a well-to-do Kittery merchant.
6.
William Pepperrell senior had begun his career as a fisherman's apprentice but was by that time a shipbuilder and fishing boat owner.
7.
William Pepperrell owned a number of enslaved African-Americans and had erected a mansion in 1682 which still stands near Pepperrell Cove near Kittery Point.
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William Pepperrell expanded their enterprise to become one of the most prosperous mercantile houses in New England with ships carrying lumber, fish and other products to the West Indies and Europe.
9.
William Pepperrell served in the Massachusetts militia, becoming a captain in 1717, then major, lieutenant-colonel, and in 1726 colonel.
10.
William Pepperrell married Mary Hirst, daughter of a wealthy Boston merchant and the granddaughter of Judge Samuel Sewall, in 1723.
11.
William Pepperrell served in the Massachusetts General Court, the provincial legislature, from 1726 to 1727, and was in the Governor's Council from 1727 to 1759, serving eighteen years as its president.
12.
In 1734, William Pepperrell joined Kittery's First Congregational Church and became active in the church's business affairs.
13.
William Pepperrell gathered volunteers, financed and trained the land forces in that campaign.
14.
Lady William Pepperrell liberated her slaves upon her death in her 1779 will.
15.
William Pepperrell was chosen a member of the Governor's Council.
16.
William Pepperrell spent the latter part of his life in London, where he helped to found the British and Foreign Bible Society.
17.
William Pepperrell died at home at Portman Square in 1816.