Sedgwick History by Bicentennial Committee 1963 (GOV.2)

In 1963 a Bicentennial Committee made up of: Lyman Gray-West Sedgwick, Grindall-North Sedgwick, Catharine S. Marston-Sargentville, Albert G. Varnum-Sedgwick, and the Selectmen of the Town of Sedgwick, Foster B. Blake Sr.-General Chairman created a booklet that gave accounts of some of Sedgwick’s 200 year history.

Their History of Sedgwick, pages 4-19 which is reproduced here, is a concise and accurate resource for those interested in local history. Additionally, the committee noted that: “There are two excellent detailed accounts of the town’s early history from which material has been drawn: one the address given by the Rev. Arthur Warren Smith on the occasion of the centennial of the Baptist Church in 1905; the other is the Deer Isle Sedgwick Register published in 1910 by Chatto and Turner.”¹ These too are valuable resources.

Major General Robert Sedgwick
The town of Sedgwick was named for Maj. Gen. Robert Sedgwick, the first of his name to immigrate to America.  He was the officer chosen by Oliver Cromwell to take charge of an expedition against the French fort at Castine in 1654. Gen. Sedgwick succeeded in taking the fort and controlling all of Eastern Maine, which remained in British hands for 13 years. After that time England ceded the territory back to France in the treaty of Breda.

After this successful military expedition, Cromwell appointed Gen. Sedgwick the Governor-General of Jamaica, and there he died in 1656.²