Peleg Wadsworth

Peleg Wadsworth was a Massachusetts officer who served during the American Revolutionary War and took part in the failed Penobscot Expedition of 1779. He helped command the land forces besieging the British at Fort George, then escaped the destruction of the American fleet.

Captured by British troops in 1781, Wadsworth escaped from confinement at Fort George and later became a politician and land agent in Maine. He was the grandfather of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Peleg Wadsworth was born in Duxbury and died in Hiram.

In Bernard Cornwell’s The Fort, Peleg Wadsworth and Paul Revere take part in the land campaign, while naval commander Dudley Saltonstall hesitates to attack the British ships in the harbour.