Robert Treat Paine Papers, Volume 4
herewith you have <the> 11 Libels vs. the Absentees Estates in Cumberland County, the discriptions sent me were not so accurate as they should have been I could have wished, in some Instances they contain extracts from the Records of all the Land the Absentee ever owned & an acct. of what appeared sold on Record. I could not Safely undertake to make the Subtraction & so I have put em all in & if any person claims & can make out their Claim to satisfaction it must be deducted. I have put in the whole of Francis Waldo’s house Lott tho only one fifth was sent me if I am wrong let that be altered: I made a Libel against all the Estate of Wm. Tyng1 sent me & have kept a blank for the quanity of the Land pray fill it up. I have no bounds sent of John Wiswalls Lands given him by his Father nor of his house lott in Town & therefore it must be left to be taken up hereafter. Brigadr. Preble2 thinks Coulson owned more of the Lot than 1/7 pray rectify it if he did. I have left a blank for a further description of Thomas Oxnard,3 1/2 acre Lott if it can be obtain let it be put in; Mr. Wait who was appointed to procure the bounds will assist in filling up blanks & rectifying any mistakes. Let those Libels be filed or entered, it may be done any day of the Court sitting & on motion to the Court they will order notification to be made by publishing in the papers, accrdg to the Law passed Decr. 4th. 1780. You have doubtless seen those kind of Notifications in the Papers the Chief matter is to make them as short as possible: hoping yr. Welfare as there is no need of my appearance this first Court for they must be cont’d yr.
William Tyng (1737–1807) had been the sheriff of Cumberland County, Maine, and represented Falmouth in the General Court in 1772 and 1773. He fell afoul of his patriotic fellow representatives in 1774 and consequently removed to Halifax in 1775. He later served the British government as an agent for loyalist settlement in New Brunswick but eventually returned to Maine, where he died (Lorenzo Sabine, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution [Boston, 1864], 2:369–372).
Jedidiah Preble (1707–1784) of Falmouth, Maine, was commissioned as a colonel (1754) and later as brigadier general (1759) of locally raised forces in the French and Indian Wars. He served from 1763 as a justice of the peace for Lincoln County and from 1778 as a justice of the Cumberland County Court of Common Pleas (George Henry Preble, Genealogical Sketch of the First Three Generations of Prebles in America [Boston, 1868], 41–57).
Thomas Oxnard (1730–1799) was a successful merchant in Falmouth, Maine, before the Revolution but left the country during the war and was, along with his brother Edward Oxnard, proscribed and banished in 1778. He was married to Martha Preble, the daughter of Brig. Gen. Jedidiah Preble. Oxnard returned to Maine after the war (Sabine, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution, 2:189–190).