Thomas Purchase

Thomas Purchase (1577–1678), also known as Thomas Purchis and Thomas Purchas, was the first English settler to occupy the region of Pejepscot, Maine in what is now Brunswick, Topsham and Harpswell. In 1628 he set up a trading post at the site of Fort Andross to barter with the local Wabanaki Native Americans.

Early life alt=Approximate location of Thomas Purchase's house and fishery (Picture of Daniel Stone House, ca. 1920)

Thomas Purchase was born in 1577 at Dorchester, Dorset, England, to Oliver Purchase and Thomesin (Harris) Purchase.

On August 6, 1613, a fire broke out in Dorchester, burning down 170 homes, setting the impetus for the future colonization movement of Massachusetts that led to the Massachusetts Bay Company. In the years after the first fire, the town was plagued with overpopulation. By the time of the next fire in 1622, John White, a Puritan minister, convinced the people of Dorchester to start a new company and head to the New World. The name of this group of investors was called the Dorchester Company. When the company failed, the original investors were part of the group that formed the Massachusetts Bay Company.

Settling in Maine

Although it is unknown which ship carried Purchase to North America or the exact date, it is documented that he made a return trip from England in 1629. He boarded the ship The Lyon (not to be confused with Lyon's Whelp), leaving Bristol England on April 5, along with five other ships, arriving in Salem, Massachusetts. He was 53 years old.

Purchase was the first English settler in what is now called Brunswick, Maine. Before it was incorporated into a town in 1739, the region was known by the Wabanaki Native Americans as Pejepscot (long, rocky rapids part), encompassing the current towns of Brunswick, Topsham, and Harpswell, Maine.

In 1628, Purchase settled in Saco, Maine, then in Pejepscot. He became acquainted with the value of the land which he afterward acquired. On June 16, 1632, the Plymouth Company granted a patent to Purchase and his brother-in-law George Way.

With this new deed, Purchase set up a trading post, where the natives already had one, to buy and sell goods, mainly salmon, sturgeon and furs on a section of the Androscoggin River known as Pejepscot Falls, adjacent to the Site of Fort Andross. Thomas Purchase Jr. was reported lost at sea in 1685.

The Probate court at Lynn, Massachusetts, dates Thomas Purchase's death to 1678, at 101 years old.