capitalist merchant politician
Samuel Waldo was a grandson of Cornelius Waldo who was living in Ipswich, Massachussets, as early as 1647, and the eldest surviving child among the twelve born to Jonathan and Hannah (Mason) Waldo of Boston. He was baptized in the First Church of that city on December 22, 1695.
According to tradition, he went to the Boston Latin School, which his sons later attended.
He began business as a merchant on capital advanced by his father. Waldo imported miscellaneous merchandise such as "choice Irish duck, fine Florence wine, Negro slaves, and Irish butter" which he sold from his home on Queen Street. He also dealt in rum, fish, and lumber. As an official mast-agent, he collaborated with Thomas Westbrook of Falmouth (Portland, Me. ) in getting out white pines for the British navy. One product of his activities in this line was the famous colonial lawsuit of Frost vs. Leighton. It was Waldo who employed Leighton to cut timber on Frost's farm, and Waldo's lawyer who defended him. Land speculation on a great scale was Waldo's chief interest, and his career is significant mainly for his unwearied efforts to develop his wild lands on the coast of Maine between the Muscongus and Penobscot rivers. In 1729, when Col. David Dunbar established himself at Pemaquid on the Maine coast and began to bring in settlers, the Muscongus proprietors chose Waldo to go to England and press their claims against Dunbar. Waldo remained abroad two years, until the Privy Council handed down a verdict which gave him victory. He now became the chief proprietor of the Muscongus grant, henceforth called the Waldo patent, and started to settle the region and to manufacture lime and iron. At the same time he entered on large plans with Thomas Westbrook for industries on the Stroudwater River in Falmouth. Strong opposition to his settlement projects arose, however, and doubts as to validity of his title to the eastern lands were circulated. To meet this attack Waldo published in 1736 a pamphlet entitled A Defence of the Title to a Tract of Land . Commonly Called Muscongus Lands, setting forth proofs of his legal ownership. Blaming Gov. Jonathan Belcher for his difficulties, he returned to England in 1738 and for three years was a leader in the conspiracy to oust the governor. Belcher's successor, commissioned in 1741, was Waldo's permanent attorney, William Shirley. About this time financial difficulties beset Waldo. One of the means he adopted for extricating himself was to bring about in 1743 a foreclosure against his former partner, Thomas Westbrook, as a result of which he acquired all of Westbrook's properties. With a friend in the governor's chair, he also resumed operations in Maine, only to have them blocked by King George's War. In the Louisburg campaign of 1745 he served as a brigadier-general, second in command of the Massachusetts forces. An unsigned portrait of Waldo with the harbor and fort of Louisburg in the background, now in the Walker Art Gallery at Bowdoin College, was painted at this period, presumably in 1749 and probably by the artist Robert Feke, rather than by John Smibert, to whom it has sometimes been attributed. The picture shows Waldo as an elegant military officer, tall and portly. In the 1750's he again renewed his land schemes and advertised abroad for settlers, chiefly in Scotland, Ireland, and Germany. By this time he and Governor Shirley had become bitter enemies as the result of a dispute over certain military fees which Waldo claimed and the Governor refused to sanction. In 1757 Shirley was replaced by Thomas Pownall, and in the spring of 1759 the new governor conducted an expedition down to the Penobscot River and there built a fort. Waldo, now sixty-three years old, accompanied the party; on May 23, while walking about near the present city of Bangor, he fell dead of apoplexy. He was buried at the new fort, but in 1760 his body was removed to King's Chapel Burial Ground, Boston.
In 1722 married Lucy, daughter of Major Francis and Sarah (Whipple) Wainwright of Ipswich. Their children were Samuel, Jr. , Lucy, Hannah, Francis, Sarah, and Ralph.
