The fort at St. Georges (Thomaston, Me.) had been built originally in 1719-20, to protect the Waldo patent; it was improved in 1740, and again in 1752 was considerably strengthened. (Williamson, i. 287.)
At Pemaquid, on the spot where Andros had established a post, Phips had built Fort William Henry in 1692, which had been surrendered by Chubb in 1696. It is described in Dummer’s Defence of the New England Charters, p. 31; Mather’s Magnalia, book viii. p. 81. In 1729 Col. David Dunbar erected a stone fort, perhaps on the same foundations, which was called Fort Frederick. There is a plan of the latter post in Johnston’s Bristol, Bremen, and Pemaquid, pp. 216, 264. Cf. Eaton’s Warren, 2d ed.
Further down the Kennebec River and opposite the upper end of Swan Island stood Fort Richmond, which had been built by the Massachusetts people about 1723. Near the present Augusta the Plymouth Company founded Forts Shirley and Western in 1754. There are plans and views of them in J. W. North’s Augusta, pp. 47-49. Cf. Nathan Weston’s Oration at the Centennial Celebration of the Erection of Fort Western, July 4, 1854, Augusta, 1854.
Col. John Winslow planned, in 1754, on a point half a mile below Teconick Falls, the structure known as Fort Halifax, according to the extent shown by the dotted line in the annexed cut.[451] Winslow’s letter to Shirley, with the plan, is in the Mass. Archives, and both are given in North’s Augusta, pp. 59, 60. The fort was completed the next year by William Lithgow, as shown by the black part of the cut, the rear flanker, forming the centre of the original plan, having been built, however, by Winslow. This block-house measured 20 × 20 feet below, and on the overhang 27 × 27 feet. The narrower of the large structures was the barracks, also raised by Winslow, but removed by Lithgow, who built the other portions.
FORT HALIFAX.
The cut follows a reconstruction-draft, made by Mr. T. O. Paine, which is given by North (p. 62). The flanker nearest the river is still standing, and the upright planks on the side, as shown in the annexed cut, mark the efforts which have been made of late to secure the timbers. In the Maine Historical Society’s Collections, vol. viii. p. 198, is a history of the fort by William Goold, as well as the annexed cut of a restoration of the entire fort, drawn by that gentleman from descriptions, from the tracings of the foundations, and from the remaining flanker. The preceding volume (vii.) of the same Collections had contained “materials for a history” of the fort, edited by Joseph Williamson,—mainly documents from the Mass. Archives. A journal of the march of Capt. Eleazer Melvin’s company in Gov. Shirley’s expedition to the Norridgewock country, when Fort Halifax was erected in 1754, kept by John Barber (May 30, 1754-Aug. 17, 1754), is in N. E. Hist. and Gen. Reg., 1873, pp. 281-85. Cf. further in Williamson’s Maine, i. 300; Hutchinson’s Massachusetts, iii. 26. A plan (1754) of the Kennebec River forts, by John Indicott (measuring 38/12 × 15/12), is noted in the Catalogue of the King’s Maps (i. 580), in the British Museum. The forts on the Kennebec, and the chief localities of that river, are described by Col. William Lithgow in 1767, in a deposition printed in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1870, p. 21. Lithgow was then fifty-two years old, and had known the river from childhood.
In 1752, when there was some prospect of quieting the country, and truck houses were built at Fort Richmond and St. Georges, William Lithgow and Jabez Bradbury were put in charge of them.
