This event is hosted by the Tate House Museum.

Colonel Thomas Westbrook (1675-1744) played what may have been the most important role in founding the City of Portland. The neighboring city of Westbrook is named for him, yet he has remained a mysterious figure since few records about his personal life have survived. During this outdoor lecture in the beautiful backyard of the 1755 Tate House, overlooking the Stroudwater River and Historic Garden Dr. Zachary Bennett will reconstruct the social and political world of colonial New England and focus on Westbrook’s rise from humble beginnings to the inner circle of Imperial politics as the King’s Mast Agent in Maine. Westbrook’s world was defined by conflict: he lived to see no less than five separate wars with Maine’s Indigenous people, the Wabanakis. The lecture will address Westbrook’s controversial role in the conquest of Wabanakis from central and southern Maine, his status as New England’s leading soldier in Maine’s most important Indian conflict known as Dummer’s War (1722–1725), and his business activities that transformed the region’s environment and dispossessed Indigenous people.

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