THE PENOBSCOT LOYALISTS.
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Falmouth, in the District of Maine, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, a little shipping port and town on Casco Bay, where now stands the city of Portland, was in 1775 the scene of events in which we find the beginning of the story.
One Capt. Samuel Coulson, in the spring of that year, had completed and launched a ship of one thousand tons; and on board another of his ships lying in the harbor were the rigging and sails for his new vessel, which he had brought from England. Coulson, of course, was a Tory. None but a Tory in Maine at that time would have dared thus openly to bring in goods from England and enter them at the custom house in a regular way; and probably no one else but a Tory would have had wealth enough to build a thousand ton ship—or, to put it in the reverse way, no one possessed of so much wealth would have been anything else but a Tory. However others might have been divided in matters of politics, the men of property would have been found on the side of law and order.
For years there had been a growing opposition to the laws of trade and navigation; and, when to these restrictive laws were added others for their better enforcement and for the collection of duties, the opposition on the part of the Whigs took the form of what we might now call a boycott upon English goods. If the Whigs, who were in the majority, could only force the Tories to join them in their boycott, it might,, they hoped, be effective in securing a repeal of the objectionable acts of Parliament.
Coulson's ship had just arrived, bringing the sails and rigging. What did it matter if there was no other way for him to get rigging and sails? To bring them from England was in contravention of the non-importation agreement; and a committee of citizens of Falmouth, not much given to troubling themselves with all the
