The Waldo family became in time the largest owners of the patent. Samuel Waldo, the brigadier, was the intimate friend of Sir William Pepperell, with whom he had served at Louisburg. They were born in the same year, and died at nearly the same time. Their friendship was to have perpetuated itself by a match between Hannah, the brigadier's daughter, and Andrew, the son of Sir William. After a deal of courtly correspondence that plainly enough foreshadows the bitter disappointment of the old friends, Hannah refused to marry Andrew, the scape-grace. In six weeks she gave her hand, a pretty one, 'tis said, to Thomas Flucker, and with it went a nice large slice of the patent. Flucker became the last secretary, under crown rule, of Massachusetts. He decamped with his friends the royalists, in 1776, but his daughter, Lucy, remained behind, for she had given her heart to Henry Knox, the handsome young book-seller of colonial Boston, the trusted friend whom Washington caressed with tears when parting from his comrades of the deathless little army of '76. The old brigadier fell dead of apoplexy at the feet of Governor Pownall, while in the act of pointing out to him the boundary of his lands. Mrs. Knox, the artillerist's wife, inherited a portion of the Waldo patent, and her husband, after the Revolution, acquired the residue by purchase. Here his troubles began; but I can not enter upon them. He built an elegant mansion at Thomaston, which he called Montpelier.[22] The house has been demolished by the demands of the railway, for which one of its outbuildings now serves as a station. [Illustration: GENERAL BENJAMIN LINCOLN.] General Knox involved in his personal difficulties his old comrade, General Lincoln, though not quite so badly as Mr. Jefferson would make it appear in his letter to Mr. Madison, in which he says, "He took in General Lincoln for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which breaks him." The same writer has also recorded his opinion that Knox was a fool; but the resentments of Mr. Jefferson are known to have outrun his understanding. Through the embarrassments incurred by his friendship, General Lincoln became interested in the Waldo patent. Lincoln was about five feet nine, so extremely corpulent as to seem much shorter than he really was. He wore his hair unpowdered, combed back from his forehead, and gathered in a long cue. He had a full, round face, light complexion, and blue eyes. His dress was usually a blue coat, and buff small-clothes. An enormous cocked hat, as indispensable to an old officer of the Revolution as to the Little Corporal, or as the capital to the Corinthian column, completed his attire. He had been wounded in the leg in the battles with Burgoyne, and always wore boots to conceal the deformity, as Knox concealed his mutilated hand in a handkerchief.