Revolutionary War Service Paul Dudley Sargent commanded a regiment at the
Siege of Boston, was wounded at
Bunker Hill, commanded a brigade in the summer of 1776, and fought at
Harlem Heights,
White Plains,
Trenton, and
Princeton. See the
List of Continental Army units (1776) for information on Col. Sargent's regiment, the 16th Continental, (later designated the 8th Massachusetts), and the
Massachusetts Line article for his earlier command of the 27th Massachusetts, disbanded after the Siege of Boston. For a time during the campaign in New York in '76 he was brevetted Brigadier General, having taken command of the regiments of Col.s Selden, Talcott & Ward in addition to his own. He and his regiment were among the force that famously crossed the Delaware with Washington on December 25, 1776. Sargent also had interests as owner or bonder in numerous
privateer vessels, on his own behalf and in partnership with
James Swan,
Mungo Mackay,
Joseph Barrell and others. Among these was one of the largest privateers ever commissioned, the 300-ton three-decker
Boston, formerly the British merchant ship
Zachariah Bayley, captured by Sargent's much smaller privateer
Yankee in 1776. Laden with supplies intended for the British army, the prize was significant enough to be the subject of congratulatory correspondence between Gen. Washington and John Hancock. Though apparently separated from the Continental Army as of 1777 Sargent remained active in the Revolutionary cause, being commissioned Colonel of the 1st Regiment Essex County Massachusetts Militia, September 26, 1778.
Post-war Occupations After the war, ruined by shipping losses, Sargent withdrew to the hinterlands, serving as chief justice of the court of common pleas of
Hancock County, Maine, its first judge of probate, first representative of the (pre-statehood) district to the
Massachusetts General Court, postmaster, justice of the peace, and as one of the founding overseers of
Bowdoin College. It is unclear whether Sargent continued his privateering activities after the war, but he did engage in real estate speculation, successfully petitioning in 1784 to acquire an archipelago off the Maine coast including Rogues, later
Roques Island, which some years afterwards was transferred to the Peabody family, whose descendants the Gardners still hold it. By 1788 he and his family had moved to Sullivan, on the mainland not far from Rogues. There is reason to suppose the departure from Boston for such a distant place may have been in part an attempt to evade creditors. In 1803 Sargent played an inadvertent role in a test of the early republic's constitutionally mandated
separation of powers, having been, along with
William Vinal, the target of an effort by the Massachusetts General Court to strip him of his commission as Justice of the Peace for seeking to be reimbursed for expenses in amounts in excess of what was allowed. "It was urged in mitigation that the charges against the judges 'originated in party contention and personal revenge', and as Sargent's overcharge amounted to only $3.33 and Vinal's to only $9, the statement is probably true." Since the assembly's action had removed the judges' powers without a hearing, it was felt by
John Quincy Adams and
Henry Knox, among others, that the future independence of the judiciary was threatened by the precedent. Both put their names to strongly worded protests. Unlike many of his business partners and relatives, Sargent left no monument of domestic architecture by
Charles Bulfinch or oil portrait by
John Singleton Copley or
Gilbert Stuart. However he did manage to raise a large number of educated and accomplished young men and women despite the remoteness and comparative poverty of his retirement. A well-stocked library, frequent extended stays with family in Boston and Salem, and much visiting back and forth with French revolutionary expatriates at nearby Fontaine Leval contributed to the cultivated atmosphere of the Sargent household, where
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord was a guest on at least one occasion. Perhaps representative of Sargent's taste, or that of any man of his times and circle, is the silver service he commissioned from
Paul Revere when in funds during 1781, the tea pot being the same type as that displayed in the famous portrait of its creator by Copley. His father Epes's bookplate, engraved by the same hand, is in the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, as is the Revere coffee pot, both displaying the Sargent coat of arms. His porcelain punchbowl resides in the
Wilson Museum in Castine, Maine, donated by
Blue Hill, Maine antiquarian and collector the late Roland Howard. ==Personal life==