William Hiscock

Damariscotta, Lincoln, Maine, USA The area was once inhabited by the Wawenock (or Walinakiak, meaning "People of the Bays") Abenaki Indians, who left behind 2,500-year-old oyster shell middens along the banks of the Damariscotta River. The Whaleback Shell Midden is now a state historic site. The land became part of the Pemaquid Patent, granted by the Plymouth Council in 1631 to Robert Aldsworth and Gyles Elbridge, merchants from Bristol, England. At Pemaquid (now Bristol), they built a fort and trading post.

Some colonists moved upriver from the village at Pemaquid about 1640 to settle what is today Damariscotta. But the settlements were attacked in 1676 during King Philip's War, with the inhabitants either driven off or massacred. Attempts to rebuild alternated with further attacks during the French and Indian Wars. The Province of Massachusetts Bay constructed Fort William Henry at Pemaquid in 1692, but it was destroyed in 1696. Its replacement, Fort Frederick, in 1729, successfully resisted the region's final two attacks, and was pulled down at the Time of the Revolution so that the British could not occupy it. With peace at last, Damariscotta grew as a trade center. It was incorporated as a separate town on March 15, 1848, set off from parts of Bristol and Nobleboro.

William Hiscox came to Damariscotta, Maine about 1650. William, Thomas' father:

• Birth: 1636 in Ireland [?]
• As far as we know he Landed in Dramascotta Ma.
• He was killed in a battle between the English and the Wawanco Indians along with one of his sons. It would appear that the Hescocks were on the side of the Indians and lost the fight.
• He had two sons one of which survived and who also had married an Indian.
• Once when talking to Ethan Nathan Hescock (Bn 1875.), he had made reference to hearing Indian stories when he was a child, but he forgot to say that the stories he heard was about his own family.

It is not known whether or not William was married or had children before he died, probably around 1688 (age 30), but also possibly at the 1676 Indian skirmish (age 18).

"As a point of contact and conflict with the French and the Native Americans who often joined them, Pemaquid [now Damariscotta] was subject to several devastations. The first occurred in 1676, when the Abenaki Indians burned the village during a King Philip's War regional uprising. Fort Charles, a wooden fortification, was constructed the following year, but it and the rebuilt village were demolished in a 1689 attack. In 1692, Fort William Henry, probably New England's first stone fortification, was erected by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Within four years it too was leveled by the combined efforts of the French and Wabanakis, and the Pemaquid settlement was abandoned for 30 years."