William Pepperrell: The Merchant Who Took Louisbourg

Beneath this weathered stone in Kittery, Maine, lies William Pepperrell, one of colonial New England's most remarkable figures. Born into a merchant family in sixteen ninety-six, Pepperrell built a trading empire stretching from the Maine coast to the Caribbean. But it was military command that made his name immortal.

In seventeen forty-five, he led a force of New England militia, largely untrained volunteers, in a siege of the French fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. Against long odds, they captured it in about seven weeks. The victory shocked both Britain and France.

King George the Second made Pepperrell the first native-born American to be created a baronet. He died in seventeen fifty-nine, just as the Seven Years War was completing what his earlier campaign had begun. The gravestone you pass here dates from seventeen thirty-three, honoring his father.

The son rests nearby, a man who helped tip the balance of empire on this continent.