Maine Memory Network

Stephen Longfellow II, the fourth Naval Officer followed a familiar trajectory. Born in Newbury (Byfield Parish), Massachusetts on February 7, 1722/23, he graduated from Harvard (Class of 1742) and came to Falmouth Neck as a school teacher in 1745, where his family soon became a leading element in his adopted town.

Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, Vol. XI, pp. 155-57 notes that “offices were rapidly thrust on Longfellow.” These included clerk of courts, town clerk, and clerk of First Parish Congregational Church. In his History of Portland, historian William Willis, p. 459 states that Longfellow in 1755 “acted as Naval Officer” under Benjamin Pemberton of Boston. This indicates that the era of salutary neglect was ending and that the Board of Trade was consolidating more control over Maine.

In 1758, Francis Waldo (Harvard Class of 1747) informed Longfellow that he was being replaced and offered him the job of Deputy Collector, but this failed to materialize. Longfellow soon challenged his rival’s right to serve as representative. Both men were appointed “to farm out the excise on tea, coffee and chinaware in Cumberland County.” Increasingly Longfellow assumed a Tory stance, backing Governor Hutchinson. Sibley, revealing his obvious patriotic bias, states “The fact that Longfellow never resumed public office strongly suggests that he was distrusted as a Loyalist, but the fact the he weighed 245 pounds may have had something to do with his retirement.”

Sibley’s jibes persist “His interleaved almanacs for 1768-1790, preserved in the Maine Historical Society, are one of the most disappointing of historical documents. They are concerned mostly with farming, and dismiss the burning of Falmouth in six words "Falmouth burnt by the Kings troops." Stephen's own house burned in the attack, although he had physically moved to Gorham prior to the bombardment.

Stephen Longfellow II and his wife Tabitha were the great-grandparents of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.